Joan of Italia
by CharlesTheBold
Summary: A bequest allows Joan and her friends to travel to Europe. But God is present everywhere, and so are his missions...
1. The Bequest

**JOAN OF ITALIA**

_(Disclaimer: I have no business connection with JOAN. My only purpose in writing this story is to have fun and maybe share it)_

_(Author's Note: This story is part of a series that takes place in the year after the JOAN OF ARCADIA TV show ended. A listing of the other stories is on my profile. The main events that have happened since May 2005 are _

_(1) Joan has let Grace, Luke, and Adam into her secret _

_(2) Joan and Adam have just gotten married._

_(3) Joan, Adam, and Grace have graduated from high school. Luke was jumped a year and allowed to graduate with them._

_(4) Grace and Luke have spent two nights together. Grace has accepted a job with a famine-relief organization abroad and Luke is tempted to follow her._

_This story starts in June, 2006_)

**Chapter 1 The Bequest**

_Now bless thyself, for thou met'st with things dying, I with things new-born. --- Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale_

_(Author's Note: I don't remember Aunt Olive's last name ever being given, so I invented one. If any reader remembers a name and tells me, I'll substitute it in)_

RRRRRING!

"Hello?" asked Helen.

"This is Sven Parker, of Parker, Bacon, and Hamm." The names meant nothing to Helen. "Does Luke or Joan Girardi live there?

"Luke's at work. Joan is on her honeymoon."

"Oh, dear," murmured Mr. Parker. "Such odd timing--"

"May I ask what this is about?" pursued Helen.

"Yes," said Parker, sounding businesslike once more. "We are a law firm, and we represent Olive Lebenkurtz. I regret to inform you that Mrs. Lebenkurtz passed away on May 31, after a short illness."

"Oh!" Her Aunt Olive, dead! And Helen hadn't even known she was ill. But given Olive's incessant travel, perhaps it was expected that news would travel slow.

"A _notaire _in France sent us her last will. It mostly concerns Joan and Luke, so they were the ones I was trying to locate. Do you think you could convene the family for the reading of the will once your daughter returns?"

"Certainly."

In the next few days Helen made inquiries about her aunt. Apparently Olive, though recovered from her stroke, had taken ill while travelling through France, and decided to settle down in a French village. In mid-May, apparently foreseeing her death and still clear in mind, she had dictated a new will to a French _notaire_. He knew English well and Olive had signed his rendering of it, so there was no question about the validity of the will. Two weeks later Olive died, having made no attempt to ask her relatives for help. She had remained Olive to the end.

Helen finally managed to reach the nurse who had attended Olive in her last days. The nurse was reticent about discussing her patient, but did admit that Madame Lebenkurtz had often demanded periods alone, to talk with "le Bon Dieu". To Helen that sounded like a last-minute religious conversion, natural in one who foresaw her death approaching, but the nurse observed that Madame never summoned a priest, not even for Last Rites. Joan seemed fascinated at this news when she heard it.

And so the extended Girardi family was convened in their living room on June 24, 2006. Aside from the parents and three children, Kevin had brought his wife Lily and Joan, who now styled herself Joan Girardi-Rove, brought her husband Adam. She was clearly doting on her hubby, and nobody dared mention the near-botched wedding. The two were living in Adam's studio, which was cramped but quite OK with Joan.

Jean Cavallo, who like Helen had been a niece of Olive's, was there representing her branch of the family; her husband and son could not be spared from the farm in North Carolina. She expressed surprise that Grace wasn't there, and Helen had replied somewhat tartly "it's just family". Grace was trying to persuade Luke to turn down a prestigious acceptance from Harvard and work in the Third World with her, and Helen wasn't at all pleased about that.

"I'll handle the minor bequests first the order that she wrote them," said Mr. Parker. 'To Jean and Jonathan Cavallo, my pony Cherie.'."

Jean sighed. "I hope it's some use as a horse, and not just a pampered pet. But little Adam can ride it as he gets older."

"'To Helen Girardi, my poodle Fifi, in recognition of Helen's flair with metaphor'."

"My flair with --? Oh!" said Helen, turning red. She remembered how she had once called the overbearing aunt an "ungrateful bitch". Olive had remembered, and willed her a real bitch, a female dog. Haha.

"'To Kevin Girardi, the herbs that helped me regain my locomotion after my stroke. To Joan Girardi, all my dresses. To Luke Girardi, my rare edition of the Prophecies of Nostradamus'."

"The herbs won't help," Kevin said. "It's a different form of paralysis."

"Even so, they're more scientific than an old fortune-teller," grumbled Luke.

"And I can imagine what sort of dresses Aunt Olive would consider cool," said Joan in horror.

All three said simultaneously: "Oh well, it's the thought that counts."

"Now to the larger bequests," said Parker. "To the Jean and Jonathan Cavallo, $10,000 free of encumbrance."

"Wow," said Joan.

"That certainly makes up for the pony," commented Mrs. Cavalo.

"'In gratitude to the Girardi family for the hospitality during my illness, I bequeath the remainder of my worldly goods to Kevin, Joan, and Luke Girardi in equal shares, on one condition--"

"Condition?" asked Helen worriedly. It would be just like Olive to ask them to eat a plateful of locusts or something.

"-- that the first use of the money will be to fund a trip abroad for Joan and Luke, that they may see the world before settling down to the daily grind'."

"Whew," said Helen in relief.

"We can satisfy the condition by crossing the border to Canada and back," mused Luke, with his logical mind.

"That's crap," said Lily, the ex-nun. "Take it in the spirit it was granted. If I had a chance to see Rome--"

"Or all of Italy, our ancestral home," said Will.

"What about my husband?" Joan asked the lawyer.

"The will doesn't say. But as long as you satisfy the conditions by going yourself, you can use the rest of the bequest to pay for his passage."

"How much money are we talking about?" asked Kevin.

"The accounts value the estate at roughly $ 250,000. With the Cavallos receiving $10,000, that leaves $ 80,000 for each of you."

The Girardis stared at each other. None of them had realized just how wealthy Aunt Olive had been, though the cost of travelling for years with no visible means of support implied that her husband must have left her quite a fortune.

Only Adam seemed undazed by the windfall.

"All that, yet no home and no companionship," he murmured. "The poor lady."

TBC


	2. Riding into the Sunrise

**JOAN OF ITALIA**

**Chapter 2 Riding into the Sunrise**

Grace thought it was hilarious to watch Luke on a horse. He had no particularly liking for animals; he was learning to ride strictly because he wanted to work with her for the famine-relief organization SEEDS, and the organization required its field workers to be able to use primitive transportation. Whereas Grace was riding her own palomino, which she had named Polly, Luke had accepted the first mount the riding stable offered him, in a sort of Hobson's Choice in reverse. And once on the horse, Luke tended to "drive" it like a vehicle, and looked confused when equal tugging of the reins did not always have equal results.

But, against her usual inclinations, Grace kept her mouth shut about all that. Luke was doing this because he loved her. He wanted to share her past-time this Saturday when they were off their summer jobs, and he wanted to be with her in the future as she performed her calling in the Third World.

Besides, it was the only way they could get together easily at the moment. During the weekdays Grace was in Washington, getting trained at the SEEDS American headquarters for work in the Third World. Luke was working for a local lab. What was worse, visiting the Girardis during the weekends had suddenly become awkward. Helen Girardi was, of course, proud to have had her kid accepted at Harvard a year early, and she was very upset at the possibility that he might follow Grace abroad instead. She suspected that his temptation was based less on idealism than on "hormones and a girl". Substitute "love" for "hormones" and Grace might have agreed. But in the end result was that she was being frozen out. And Joan, who might have helped out the lovers, was away on her own honeymoon.

Grace never would have thought that she'd be nostalgic for high school after one month, but certainly things were easier when they could pass in a corridor or sneak into the biology closet. At least riding in the park made it easy to talk in privacy. Any eavesdropper would have to follow on his or her own animal, and be very visible.

So Luke told Grace about Aunt Olive's will. "Ah, so you're joining the ranks of the Idle Rich. Getting a lot of money without lifting a finger to earn it."

"Actually, we're required to take a trip abroad."

"Oh, the horror, the horror! What'll it be, Rio or Tahiti? Scantily clad girls in both places, I hear."

Luke reacted to her sarcasm by answering her question literally, which was actually probably a good idea. "We're thinking of going to Italy. Dad considers it our ancestral home and thinks we should see it for ourselves. Adam wants to see all the art museums and Joan is willing to humor him. I didn't have a preference. I mean, as long as I can get on the Internet--"

"Yeah. What's the timing on all this?"

"We'll probably go the last week of July and the first week of August. We're waiting for our passports now. I'll miss you," he added suddenly.

"Well, let's not get too lovey-dovey. If you try to kiss me you may fall off your horse."

When the ride was over Luke had to return his mount to the riding stable across the street, while Grace, who kept Polly at the Begh farm, fetched the horse van. It gave her a few minutes away from Luke, so she got out her cell phone and called one of her SEEDS coworkers. "Hello, this is Grace Polonski. Can you tell me if SEEDS has an office in Italy?"

----------------

"You want to go to Europe?" the Rabbi said in astonishment.

"Yeah. Not the Grand Tour. Just one country, Italy."

"Because the Girardis will be there," said Mrs. Polonski. Grace looked at her mother in surprise, and the latter explained, "Mrs. Girardi called me."

_Great, the Alliance of the Mothers_. "I won't be goofing offSEEDS has an office in Rome, because it's closer to their Third World countries, and because they coordinate with some Catholic charities. I'll be continuing my training there. They even do the instruction in English, because that's their common language."

"And in the evenings and the weekend you'll be with the Girardis. Maybe even the ni--"

"My free time's my own, Mom," Grace said, hastily interrupting before her mother could say what was in both their minds, that she could spend her nights with Luke while their parents were an ocean away.

"I would have hoped that the first place you'd go abroad would be the Holy Land," said the Rabbi sadly. "But not with a war on. Maybe sometime in our lifetime it'll finally be over. But remember, Grace, Jews were persecuted in Italy in the past. _Ghetto_ was an Italian word."

"I talked to the Figliolis. They said Italy was comparatively one of the most tolerant nations in Europe, through most of its history. They didn't have to flee until Mussolini allied himself with Hitler, and they say that was a fluke. Modern-day Italy should be perfectly safe."

The Rabbi thought over it. "What about travelling expenses?"

So they were down to practicalities. "SEEDS won't pay my way, except on the final limb of the journey. So it's out of my pocket--"

"You mean our pockets."

"Um, yeah." She did not draw a big salary at SEEDS. It as a charity, after all, and she was just in the probationary stage. She didn't mind, except that it meant she couldn't afford the trip over on her own.

"Let us think about it."

-------

Grace went to her room and looked around. She had always prided myself on being free of materialism, but here was a computer with Internet attachment, and there was her TV with a VCR/DVD recorder. And the room was all hers. Grace had shared her Washington flat with various women from SEEDS, all of whom bailed out after a few days for some reason. It, too, had its share of high-tech entertainment.

But if she was posted in a country suffering from famine, it may be difficult to get electronics or, for that matter, dependable electricity. And she'd have to accept what lodgings were available, which might not be private. Should she be getting ready for that way of life?

She rejoined her parents at dinner. "Your mother and I have been talking," said the Rabbi. "We know we made your teen years unhappy, and we want to make it up to you. So we'll pay your way to Europe."

"Thank you!"

"Wait!" commanded the Rabbi. "I said TO Europe. One-way. We'll not pay your way back in August. You should stay with the Rome office until it's time to go to the Third World."

"It's for the best, Gracie," added her mother. "We don't want the charity to think that you're constantly following your boyfriend across the ocean. It may make them think you don't have the maturity for the task."

Grace bitched about it for a while but finally realized that she would have to make a choice. Lose Luke for two weeks and then have him for an indefinite period until he made HIS crucial choice of college vs work. Or spend an idyll with him in Rome, not knowing what the future would bring afterward.

"I'll think about it."

------

Grace timed it well. As she got to the Girardi house on July 22, 2006, the Girardi trio were just walking out their door, laden with suitcases. Grace lugged her own out of the trunk.

"Grace -- what--?" stammered Luke.

"I'm coming with you! My parents agreed to pay my way." She would mention the one-way problem later on the trip. Plenty of time.

Luke gave her a big hug. So, more platonically, did Joan and her husband.

And up in the front doorway, Helen looked on in dismay.

_(Author's Note: Grace decided to change her name to Polonski at the end of my earlier story COMING OF AGE, so that's how she identifies herself to her employer)_

_(Author's Note: In the discussion of Anti-semitism I was using an Encyclopedia Britannica article on Anti-semitism in Europe before the twentieth century. The writer judged that the Netherlands had the best record for tolerance, and Italy the second best._

_(Author's Note: I wanted to warn that progress on this story is going to be slow, because I'm starting on a new job in a week.)_

_TBC_

TBC


	3. The Arrival

**JOAN OF ITALIA**

**Chapter 3 Arrival**

Luke found air travel across the Atlantic quite paradoxical. On the one hand, he was flying through the air at several hundred kilometers per hour. (He always thought in the metric system when it was something out of his daily experience) On the other, he could scarcely move, being belted in a seat behind a jerk who leaned his own seat back. Grace, beside him, had a similar problem, but solved it by rudely insulting the person in front of her until he corrected it.

Another paradox was that though his three most loved people in the world were all with him, it was impossible to speak privately to them, particularly about their shared secret. Joan solved the problem through an old school technique: passing notes.

_Aunt Olive's nurse said that Auntie would "talk to God" in private. Do you think that was ordinary praying, or the thing we do?_

Luke read his sister's note and wrote under it.

_I certainly don't think she was doing our thing when she visited two years ago. Our Friend up there would have warned you._

He passed it back to Joan, who added:

_Think you're right about then, but in the two years since? Aunt Olive was used to a lot of weird stuff. She may have accepted the idea of God-as-a-stranger a lot quicker than Mom might._

Luke wrote:

_Maybe, but what's the point? How could He send her on missions when she was old and dying?_

Joan passed up a one-word reply:

_Dunno._

Luke showed the correspondence to Grace, who borrowed his pencil and scribbled:

_There's one thing she could do. She could leave you guys a lot of money._

Luke stared at the suggestion. Was the inheritance part of some complicated divine plan? Was it a reward for past faithful service. God didn't seem to work that way. An expensive mission coming up? Or was the Europe trip involved? Maybe there was a mission waiting for them in Europe -- except that the choice of Europe was their idea, not Olive's. Of course, God may have foreknown that---

Somehow the coming vacation suddenly seemed a lot less fun.

"Attention," said the loudspeaker. "Arrival at Leonardo da Vinci Airport in Rome in one hour. 9 A.M. local time. Please prepare your declaration forms for Customs. _Achtung_!" it added, switching to other languages for the same announcement.

Luke and Grace stared at the accumulated notes.

"I don't want the customs people to see this. If they know English--"

"We could throw it away, or flush it down the toilet." said Luke.

"People could still find it while cleaning the plane," said Grace, who was apparently in paranoid mode.

"Maybe I should swallow it," said Luke, half-seriously.

"Gotta better idea," said Grace. "I'll go to the lavatory and stuff it in my bra. It'll be safe, unless they choose to strip-search me--"

"Hey, that's an idea. Can I strip-search you tonight?"

"As long as it's mutual," commented Grace, heading for the lavatory.

----

The plane finally landed, at 9:05 Sunday morning. Customs turned out to be less of a hassle than they feared. In fact Grace, her fears allayed, found it too smooth.

"It's embarrassing to be talked to in English, when you're in their country." She complained. "I've been trying to learn Italian, but--"

"I studied French for years," commented Joan. "And I forgot it all immediately after graduation."

"That's my point. Americans are used to Europeans humoring them, but it won't last forever. Other countries are catching up with the US and passing it."

"Let's just worry about the next two weeks, okay?" asked Adam.

Grace laughed and cheered up. Luke sometimes forgot that their friendship went many years back, before the Girardis ever arrived in Arcadia. Fortunately it was thoroughly Platonic.

Although there seemed to be a train into Rome from the airport, all four realized they needed the chance to talk in privacy, and so they rented a car. Joan got behind the steering wheel. "Ulp, the speedometer's in metric. How do I--?"

"100 kph is 62 mph," said Luke. "You can sort of estimate everything from there."

"Thanks."

The landscape they were driving through was a revelation to Luke. All of his life he had thought of his surroundings as belonging to two worlds. Either it was Arcadia (dull and mundane, except that it had a few wonderful people in it like his family and Grace) or the endlessly fascinating scientific world. His notion of history was reading up on Einstein and Newton in their times.

Now he was seeing a new culture that didn't fit in either category. There was the beautiful Italian countryside that had been cultivated for centuries, quite different from the "wide open spaces" of America. And as they got closer to Rome he could see survivals from ancient or Renaissance Rome. Fountains, statuary, marble ruins of an ancient structure, representing a culture alien to him. To him "The Ancients" were Pythagoras and Socrates and Euclid and Archimedes, the founders of math and science. Not the builders and artists.

_Aunt Olive was right. You don't know what you're missing until you've really seen the world._

But his sister's thoughts were travelling in a different direction. "We've all discussed the possibility that God had Aunt Olive send us here so we could do a mission, right?"

"Maybe," said Luke. "Though you'd think God would find a local to do that sort of thing."

"Might not be easy," observed Grace. "They say modern Europeans are a lot less religious than Americans. Maybe nobody will believe him when he does His Cute Boy act."

"Or maybe there's a local, but he or she needs our money to get things done," mused Joan.

"Whatever it is must be big, if it involved moving the four of us across the ocean," Grace pointed out. "Or at least Luke and Joan, the original beneficiaries."

"I wouldn't worry," said Adam, speaking up for the first time. "We're here, let's enjoy it. Maybe a mission will develop, maybe not. _Que sera sera._ It might be fun if it happens. At least they always have good ripples."

Luke, who always liked to plan things beforehand, wasn't sure if he could imitate that state of mind, but it did sound attractive.

"Watch out, Joan!" yelled Grace as a Ferrari suddenly switched in front of them. "Didn't you see it coming on?"

"No," admitted Joan. "I must be having jet lag. That happened to me in reverse, when I visited Veronica Mars in California. What's the difference from Maryland time, 5 hours? I still feel like it's 5 A.M."

"I don't mean to sound like a wimp," said Grace, "but maybe the most sensible thing we can do once we reach our hotel is take a nap, and try to adjust to local time, before we contend with Roman traffic. I didn't get any sleep on the flight, myself. Too many strangers around. As they say in that play, 'Hell is other people'."

They had been fortunate in their travel agent. She had found them a hotel in downtown Rome, not anonymously international, but a charming place whose landlady spoke English. Everybody knew -- including Helen and Mrs. Polonski, neither of whom were happy about it -- that Grace and Luke intended to stay together for the two weeks. Not knowing the landlady's opinion on such matters, Luke cautiously presented Grace as his wife. Since Grace had already given her name, Luke ended up getting registered as Signor Lucio Polanski. Joan fared better, though the landlady kept referring to her as Signora Giovanna.

Luke and Grace's room was pretty, though its subtle Continental charms were probably lost on Luke (and, for that matter, on Grace). Grace took off her jeans and blouse, and got into the double bed in her undies.

"I thought we were going to play 'strip search'." Luke commented, as she took the paper out of her bra and put it on the bedside table, as if that was a normal bedtime activity. He was not entirely sure of what that game was supposed to consist of.

"Later," said Grace. "I meant it about needing a nap. The last thing we want to do at the moment is tire each other out, before we go out to conquer Italy."

Luke knew better than to argue with Grace. He divested himself of a few clothes, climbed into the other side and fell asleep amazingly fast.

Waking up an hour later, Luke found his beloved's head resting on his shoulder. He kept still, not wanting to wake her up. Grace was right: sleeping together without sleeping together had its charms.

He hadn't entirely lied to the landlady. Never had he felt more married.

_(Author's Note: This is slightly autobiographical, since I have flown to Europe and paid a visit to Rome. Too bad I didn't have people like Joan & company with me.)_

_(Author's Note: Grace's quote about "other people" is from Jean Paul Sartre's play on the afterlife, usually known in America as "NO EXIT".)_

TBC


	4. Ars Longa, Vita Breve

**JOAN OF ITALIA**

**Chapter 4 Ars longa, vita breve**

_(AUTHOR'S NOTE: The chapter title is a Latin proverb meaning "Art lasts long, but life is short")_

_(AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is somewhat autobiographical again. I visited the Vatican Museum once and thought it would be fun to imagine its effect on Joan & Company. Their various opinions are not necessarily mine, but based on their characters. The young Italian couple are there for purposes of the future story. If you're curious about the paintings described you can look them up on Wikipedia.)_

_(AUTHOR'S NOTE: Some reviewers complained, rightly, that I glossed over the death of Aunt Olive, so I've brought her back for another scene.)_

Joan was back in her bed in Adam's studio, and her husband was gone for some reason. She wondered if the whole European trip was a dream and they were just back in dull Arcadia. But the figure that walked in did not belong in the studio, or anywhere else on Earth. THIS was the dream.

"Aunt Olive! I'm so sorry we weren't with you at -- at the end."

"Don't be, my girl. Travelling light was my choice, because I wanted to be my own woman. And I wasn't lonely. That French cottage was haunted, and by the most delightful ghost. But, oddly enough, she was American."

"Huh?"

"Cut off at seventeen, before she could see the world or even experience the ordinary joys of adulthood. But she loved hearing the tales of my travels. She was full of spirit, besides being a spirit herself."

"Judith! You met Judith! HE must have sent her to give you some companionship."

"And nowadays she's showing me around HER realm. So much more varied than our world. You don't just see the tomb of Romeo and Juliet, you can MEET Romeo and Juliet. If you'll excuse me, I must get back to my sight-seeing."

"Wait! Aunt Olive, did HE tell you to leave us the legacy? And why? Come back!" She tried to follow her aunt, but there seemed to be a mysterious force keeping the living girl from the dead woman--

"Jane! Watch out! You're tangled up in the sheets!" said a familiar voice.

She was back in the Roman hotel, with Adam.

"Sorry. Weird dream. Did I wake you up?"

"Nah, I was awake, but didn't want to disturb you. Now that we're both up, I think I'll go shave. Didn't get a chance this morning."

"Okay."

He got out of bed, and his wife watched his unclothed form disappear into the bathroom. One of the revelations of marriage was that Adam habitually slept in the nude. Unlike Joan, he didn't have two siblings of the opposite sex to hide his body from, only a father who lived at the other end of his house. That night in the camper, of course, had been atypical.

"Do you have a preference for what to do the rest of the day?" called out Joan.

"Vatican museum," Adam said immediately. "That has the Sistine chapel and the Raphael murals."

"Think they'll be open on a Sunday?"

"Yeah, I checked the web site before we flew over."

She got out her cell and dialed her brother's phone number. "Hi, are you guys awake?"

"No, I'm talking in my sleep."

"Haha. Adam wants to go to the Vatican Museum. Want to make it a foursome?"

"Sure."

"Does Grace have a religious objection to visiting the Catholic headquarters?"

"No, we've discussed it before. It's just an exotic temple from her point of view."

Joan tried to drive to the Vatican, but Adam warned that they couldn't get very close, and they ended up parking in a disconcertingly modern parking garage. As they approached Vatican City, she saw an impressive circle of free-standing columns with statues on top. Once you passed through them, you felt like you had entered a different world, even though you were still outside and had only traveled a few feet. Grace said it was actually an adaptation of a Jewish idea, the _erev_ or symbolically enclosed space.

"Oh my God," exclaimed Joan, looking at the towering edifice of St. Peter's. She had thought Father Ken's church in Arcadia was ornate, but it was nothing to compared to this. It was almost as tall as a skyscraper, but even broader than it was tall, and full of the most impressive artwork.

"How did they manage that with pre-industrial technology?" asked Luke; that was his way of being impressed.

"It took a century to build," Adam said. "It was started by Julius II, Michelangelo's pope, and Michelangelo later had a hand in it. Some people think he did the façade that we're looking at now."

"But why?" asked Joan. "I mean, He finds it content to walk along a small-town street with a pack of dogs. Why does He need all this?"

"People serve him in their own ways, Jane," said Adam. "You do it by going on missions. Others create artworks for the Glory of God."

"For the gloria of themselves, more likely," said a female voice behind them. "There is no Dio to glorify."

They turned and found a young couple behind them. She was fashionably clad in bluejeans, and had black hair deliberately teased up in spikes. He was slightly taller, with long black hair and a beard, and his getup was equally informal.

"_Perdoname_," she said. "I heard talking, and could not resist expressing my own opinion."

"Yeah, I know the feeling," said Grace.

Joan was a more annoyed. She had thought it would be safe to discuss their secrets out loud in an Italian-speaking land; she had not counted on how widely known the English language was. Fortunately they had apparently not heard the part about Dog-Walking God.

"So you think this is all a con?" pursued Grace.

"No. _La Chiesa_ has done great things in history: preserving ancient learning, dispensing charity, recognizing merit even in the lowborn. But it is all based on _La Menzogna Grande, _the big lie, that _il Dio_ is behind it all. _Il mio amante_ Michel," she patted her companion's arm, "says everything can be explained through science."

"Actually, there's something called the Uncertainty Principle--" started Luke.

"I know about it, Marghareta misunderstood me," protested the young Italian.

"Luke, don't you think it's rude to do nerd-talk before we've been introduced?" asked Joan, amused.

"Oh, yeah. I'm Luke Girardi, and this is my girlfriend, Grace. My sister Joan, and her husband Adam. He's an artist, and he's anxious to see the museum."

"Marghareta loves the art, she wanted to show me," said Michel. "Would you like to accompany us?"

"Sure," Adam said.

Grace and Luke seemed agreeable too. Only Joan saw possible deeper meetings in the encounter. In her experience, strangers rarely walked up to her by accident. Either they were _Him_, or they were the start of a mission.

--

"La scuola di Ateni, by Raffaelo. The School of Athens," announced Marghareta.

They were standing in a room that was once the Pope's library. Now the Vatican Library had grown huge and moved elsewhere, and the fame of the room was now due to the artwork by Raphael.

The group was standing in front of an immense, awe-inspiring fresco, depicting the ancient philosophers. A vigorous old man and a young one were in the center having a sort of high-class argument -- Plato and Aristotle, said Adam, who had studied it in art class. Before them, somewhat disconcertingly, was a man in the Greek version of underclothes, Diogenes the Cynic. The trio, according to Marghareta, represented the three ideals of science: imagination, observation, and skepticism: To one side men (and one woman) were apparently showing each other their writings; a group on the other side was grouped around a man writing a geometric proof.

Adam and Luke were particularly transfixed. To Adam this was one of the greatest of paintings, now seen in the "flesh". To Luke it was an impressive attempt by an artist to represent men of thought.

"Raffaelo linked Ancient Greece to Renaissance Italy by using famous contemporaries as models," Marghareta went on. "Plato is Leonardo da Vinci. The gloomy man in front is Michelangelo. Euclid is Bramante, the architect of Saint Peter's and Raphael's mentor, and so Raphael drew himself among the students."

"_E magnifico,"_ said Michel, "but it also shows what a weight the ancients were on the Renaissance. Only when they were cleared away could modern science begin."

Grace had drifted off to the left to another mural. "Ah. Diana told me there was a painting of the pagan gods and goddesses in the Papal office, and she was right. And one of the goddesses is showing her breasts, surprise, surprise."

"That's the Parnassus," said Marghareta, understanding Grace's English but apparently missing the sarcasm. "Also by Raffaelo. The goddesses are the Muses, and the breasts symbolize their nurturing effect on the artist."

"Besides looking real sexy," Grace said cynically.

Joan went red, remembering how she had posed nearly nude for two of her husband's paintings. "Um, shouldn't we be hurrying up in order to get to the Sistine Chapel?"

----

The Ceiling was as dazzling as everybody said, particularly the famous central tableau of God bringing Adam to life with a touch of the fingers. But the lesser known altarpiece sparked disagreeable emotions. An Apollo-like figure in the center was waving his arms dramatically as if he had the universe at his fingertips. On his right a few souls rose up to Heaven, but on his left far more plunged down into Hell. Michelangelo's LAST JUDGEMENT.

"Political propaganda," said Michel with distaste. "Do as we say, or you shall suffer terribly."

"And yet the corresponding part of the Bible just asks whether people were good to their fellow man," observed Grace, startling her friends with her unexpected familiarity with the New Testament. "The charitable are rewarded, the callous people are condemned -- nothing about obedience or belonging to the right church."

"_E Verro_," said Marghareta. "And there are signs that Michelangelo did not agree with the painting's philosophy. See the ghostly figure on the right? That's Michelangelo's self-portrait. It seems to be saying 'I am classifying myself with the Damned'. Or 'My heart is not in this. It is only the work of my hands'.

To Joan the painting had far more personal significance. After panicking and failing to marry Joan at their first ceremony, Adam had felt such self-loathing that he had sketched a copy of the painting's central figure, substituting Joan for the avenging God. It was not something she wanted to remember.

Meanwhile Luke had spotted something the others had missed. Nudging his sister, he whispered, "Joan, look at the figure of the young God. Does he look familiar?"

Joan stared_. Cute Boy God?_

TBC


	5. Michel at Home

**JOAN OF ITALIA**

**Chapter 5 Michel at home**

That night, Luke and Grace decided to skip the silly strip-search idea and simply make love. No, _fare amore_ -- it sounded so much better in Italian. Luke was starting to appreciate the charms of his surroundings, and in particular he could appreciate a society that made a geometric proof into a great work of art.

The nearest thing to a strip search came the next day, when Grace emerged naked from the shower and started toweling herself off. Women on TV always carefully folded the towel to show a little cleavage and cover the more interesting stuff, but this was real life, and Grace was in the flesh.

What to Luke was a fascinating display was, to Grace, a boring bit of morning hygiene. "I gotta go the SEEDS office today and start my local training," she commented. "What are your plans?"

"Michel invited me to visit this morning. I'll take him up on it."

"Have you heard Joan's theory, that Michel and Marghareta are supposed to be part of our mission?"

"Yeah, but I don't see how. They seem pretty happy and well-adjusted."

"They don't believe God exists."

"Neither does my Dad, but that never seems to bother God. On the one occasion that Joan brought that up, He said something like 'Godliness exists in places where you would not look for it'." Luke pondered. "This may be something like our visit to my cousins last year on their farm. The real point wasn't to help THEM, it was for us to learn a different way of life. Maybe Michel is supposed to be my guide."

Grace shrugged. "I suppose that's for you and Joan. I already know what I'm supposed to do."

---

Michel's directions landed Luke in an area dominated by student housing. Not dorms as such, but dominated by a student's point of view. He saw posters up on almost every available wall, representing Einstein and Stephen Hawking, and some figures he didn't recognize. Some were obviously political, and though Luke could not read the text, the pictures seemed to be referring to the Iraq war. Some denizens had dispensed with the paper and painted graffiti on the walls: very artistic graffiti, as far as Luke could judge.

He knocked on the appropriate door, and Michel. "_Bon giorno, Lucio_, come in."

"_Grazie."_

Luke entered and looked around for clues as to what his host was like. It was a small two-room flat, with a living-room cum kitchenette in front and a bedroom in back. Noting a blouse carelessly thrown on the bed, Luke guessed that Marghareta lived here and that neither was a good housekeeper.

"I hope I'm not in Marghareta's way."

"No. She is working this morning, as I do in afternoon."

"Too bad you can't be together more."

"The nights are the important time, said Michel cheerfully.

Luke was unused to such a frank reference to sexual activity, and hastily changed the subject. "I suppose that you're earning money for tuition this fall?"

"No, the rent. The tuition is free."

"That's great. I've got a scholarship myself, but it won't cover everything."

"Where do you go?"

"I may be going to Harvard." This wasn't the time to bring up the question of whether to follow Grace or go to school.

"Heard of it. It is an honor to go there."

"What's your major?" asked Luke, not wanting to sound like he was boasting.

"Physics. I hope to work at CERN, in Switzerland. But failing that, I hope to learn enough to succeed as an engineer."

"Sounds like you have your life well planned out," said Luke, rather enviously.

"_La vita_ can never be planned entirely. The parents of Marghareta, they died in an accident of traffic, here in Rome, two years ago."

"I'm sorry." Am I supposed to help them grieve? But after two years, they seemed to have adjusted. Luke looked around again.

More posters. But this time for movies, recognizable in spite of the Italian titles from the pictures. 2001, the Matrix, I Robot. "It looks like you enjoy sci-fi movies."

Michel looked a little puzzled at the abbreviation. "Si, I like the scientific romances, but books more than movies. Movies are all _extravaganze_, they rarely explain things. Look at _L'alieno._ Four movies, and we still know nothing about where the _alieni_ are from or why they live the way they do."

"But you stuck through all four?"

"Signora Weaver e si bella."

Luke laughed. "Don't let Marghareta hear that."

"Ah, she loves Signor Orlando Bloom. It doesn't bother us." Suddenly Michel sobered. "Let me tell you _un segreto grande_. I am trying to write a scientific romance of my own. But I can't show it to Marghareta. She knows the great writers, from Dante all the way to Eco and she would say _puto."_

_"Puto?"_

"I stink."

"Oh." This didn't sound like a mission, but it did sound like fun. This was like talking with Friedmann, without Friedmann's irritating mannerisms. "I'd like to see it, but I can't read Italian."

"But it is i_n inglese_. Most of my favorite scientific romances are."

"Why don't you post it on the Internet?"

"It might be embarrassing. My English is not perfect."

Luke could tell where this was heading, though he knew that wasn't Michel's original intention in inviting him. "What's it about?"

"Some people in the far future lose a war. They go back in time with their technology, and hope to undermine their enemies that way. I'm still revising that part, but there's a later chapter that's basically finished. I call it _L'origine d'una santa._

"Why don't you let me read it? I can help with the English."

_"Grazie molto."_


	6. Origin of a Saint

**JOAN OF ITALIA**

_(Author's Note: this chapter is basically a story-within-a-story. It may look like a digression, but it will fit in later._

**Chapter 6 Origin of a saint**

After a little editing by Luke to get rid of unintentional Italianisms, Michel's story looked like this:

Origin of a saint.

Oidli 3 (_Luke eventually realized that the name was the Italian "_il dio_" spelled backwards_) trudged along the country road. To his super-urban senses almost any rural road would look primitive, but he could still see symptoms of decline. The fields on either side, which looked fertile enough, were overgrown with weeds. The Roman road itself was in severe disrepair. Little dung on the road, which was personally a relief to Oidli, but paradoxically that was also a sign of decline: droppings would have been a sign that horses and cattle were being driven to market, and that would have implied prosperity.

The blight, according to the Temporal Computer, was due to an utterly artificial political situation that prevented anybody from managing the land effectively. In theory it was ruled by Henry VI Plantagenet of England, by grace of God. In reality Harry was a mere boy, good-natured but not too bright, and all the decisions were being made by his relatives. Harry ruled France only because his father had conquered it in a bloody war, supposedly based on a legal dispute from a hundred years ago. England had all the power, but nobody in England cared about anything in France but its money.

The Temporal Computer had judged that changing this situation would suit the Time Refugees' master plan. The directions that it gave Oidli to change history were utterly incredible. But the Computer's reasoning process was too complex for humans to follow, and Oidli had to accept it on trust. The Computer had always been right before.

"_Ton or ou ta vite!"_ shouted a gruff voice, breaking into Oidli's reverie.

(_Michel had marked his dialog with dashes in the European fashion. Luke changed them into American-style quotes_)

Oidli looked around him; he was surrounded by three brigands. Whether they were native Frenchmen, or Englishmen come to despoil the countryside, was not clear; Oidli had been programmed to speak midieval French but was not good at accents.

While he was thinking through this, the brigand behind him whacked him on the head. Oidli fell, and realized that it was time to stop thinking and defend himself. Fortunately he had sufficient weaponry inside.

"_Vous regretterez cela_," said Oidli, jabbing his finger toward the man who had struck him. His weaponry, using his finger to focus, fired and the brigand fell. The other two stared, and Oidli took advantage of their astonishment to give them the finger as well (_Note by Luke: That's funny, but I don't think Michel intended that sentence the way it came out)_

Oidli looked down at the bodies considering what to do next. Turn them in to the authorities? Oidli despised the authorities himself; in one town he had seen a young woman public whipped for saying "_Le roi, c'est un idiot". _Besides, he had no way to transport three bodies, and it would delay his mission. Kill them? Tempting, but he had taken an oath to spare all life during his mission. He decided simply to leave them there, hoping that they would be more intimidated when they woke up.

Finally he reached his target, guided by his technology. When he found it, he stared. A hardy peasant girl was shoveling manure in a stable yard. She had hitched up her dress and tied it around her belt, not to be sexy but to keep from besmirching her skirt, probably one of the few she owned. Oidli turned up his sophisticated nose, but the locator said that this young woman was the Temporal Computer's choice.

Oidli hid himself and amplified his voice with impressive overtones. "My child!"

She started and looked around her. "Qui est la? Qui estes vous?"

"Fear not. Thou hast found favor with God," said Oidli, trying to match the religious phraseology. The Bible had not been rendered into French yet, and she probably could not read it if it had, but she would have heard the phrases in church, translated by the priest.

_"Estes-vous un ange? Ou un saint_? I have prayed so much to Saint Michael to smite _les_ goddams as he once smote the devil!"

Goddams? Interesting word; she must have picked it up from hearing coarse English soldiers swearing.

"And I have replied. They shall be smitten, but you yourself shall do it."

"I? I am a mere girl, barely having 12 years."

"But you shall grow older. Develop your strength, your courage, and your will. We shall guide you."

She looked awe-struck, and to Oidli's surprise, her expression nearly awed him in turn. For the first time he realized why the Temporal computer may have chosen her.

Suddenly she rushed into the barn. A few minutes later she emerged, leading an old nag and carrying an old rusty sword. With a leap that showed how experienced she was with horses, she got astride the animal's back and started waving her sword. Oidli was tempted to laugh at her play-acting.

Four years later, he was no longer laughing. By then he realized that he had launched Joan of Arc on her career.

FINE

TBC


	7. Adam and David

**JOAN OF ITALIA**

**Chapter 7 Adam and David**

Florence was astonishing. It was only a fraction of the size of Baltimore, Joan's notion of a big city, yet nearly half the art masterpieces in the world seemed to be there. The city itself was a work of art, with the charming Ponte Vecchio over the river, and the immense red cathedral dome dominating the whole city. Take away all the artworks, and the city would still shine as a city of writers: Dante, Petrarch, Bocaccio, even Machiavelli--

Even the _gelato_ was heavenly.

Joan and Adam decided to devote Tuesday to the tour, driving up in the morning and back down in the evening. After a tour of the town, they focussed their efforts on the main art museum, bizarrely known as the Uffizi or "Offices" because it had once been part of the provincial government. If you had as many masterpieces as the Uffizi did, you could call yourself anything you liked.

Joan, though she was the daughter of an artist, and had absorbed a few concepts over the years, had never had any formal training in either painting or its history. She was seeing everything as an amateur, and she thought them fascinating. The high point was seeing the Birth of Venus by Botticelli, not only for its own sake but also because Adam had used it as a model when drawing Joan as Aphrodite: the beautiful goddess in the middle with busy, but less impressive goings-on in the wings. The whole thing was delightfully unreal, far removed from the prosaic like that she led in Arcadia.

Adam was silent, but Joan presumed that her husband was awed, at beholding great works of art in the original.

They had deliberately saved the Accademia for last. Like the Uffizi it had an unimpressive name, the Academy of Art and Design, like the little gallery in Arcadia. But Arcadia had nothing like the DAVID.

Joan looked up at Michelangelo's giant heroic nude in awe. This was more than simple admiration of an artwork; it touched something far more primal. She was vaguely aware of a paradox in her mind. She was accustomed to seeing God in human form; this statue was the opposite, a man made godlike. If the true God was even mightier than this -- Joan suddenly felt nervous about the occasions during which she had dissed the Almighty.

She turned to her husband and was startled by the worried look on his face.

"What's wrong?" she asked. Getting no immediate answer, she decided to make light of it. "Are you intimidated because his thing is bigger than yours? Don't be, I'd much prefer to have you in bed."

Adam didn't laugh, but finally he said, "I'll never create something like this."

That was a shock to Joan. For three days she had been accompanying her husband from one museum to another, thinking that the sight of great art would please him. Instead, it was having an intimidating effect.

Joan remembered a phrase from her class in the English Romantic poets: "A man's reach must exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?" Her own personal hero was Joan of Arc, but Joan knew that she would never live up to the comparison. She would never attack her enemies on a spirited charger; she'd probably fall off the horse. She never would have kept her cool when facing judges who wanted to burn her alive. Years of being overlooked or belittled had at least taught her moderation.

But that did not seem to be the proper tack to take with Adam. "You're just 18, Adam. When Michelangelo carved THAT, he was, what?"

"25. It took him five years."

That was a little younger than Joan had hoped. "Oh. Well, seven years difference. A lot can happen in seven years," she added feebly.

They were crossing the square surrounding the cathedral with its dome when Joan noticed street vendors set up in the large open space. One old woman was selling flowers. Adam could scarcely get envious of flowers, and they might cheer him up. "Excuse me a moment, will you? Gotta shop."

Adam nodded, and Joan walked over to the floral display. "_Quanto costi?"_ she asked, pointing at the best bundle.

_"Diece euro, Signora."_

Joan rummaged in her purse. Euros were easier to figure out that most European measurements, since they had been set equal to a dollar when first created. She wondered how the old woman knew that she was a _signora_, wife.

But the reason was clear when the old woman abruptly switched to English.

"They are beautiful, but they won't last, Joan. They have been severed from their roots."

Joan sighed. "Old Italian Woman God?"

_"Si_. You are as near to me in Europe as in America."

"I would've thought you'd pop up before now."

"You are in a new environment, Joan, You needed time to acclimate."

"Right. Adam seems to have gotten culture shock. How can I fix that?"

"You are his wife, Joan. You will think of something."

Joan sighed again. "So, roots. That's the mission? You want me to look up my roots?"

"Si." The old woman was starting to move her unsold flowers to a cart.

"What about Michele and Marghareta? Are they part of the mission?"

"They would be nice to know, Joan. _Ciao."_ She dragged the cart into a crowd and disappeared, with a God-wave.

Joan went back to Adam with her bouquet. One thing was clear; she was NOT going to burden him with the revelation of a new mission yet. "Let's go back to Rome, Adam."

"But I thought we were going to tour the cathedral."

_Yeah, so Adam can be intimidated by that Dome. "_Some other day. I'm tired."

Once they had retrieved their car, Joan produced the bouquet. That seemed to cheer Adam up. So did the journey through the countryside, whose visual beauty clearly couldn't be blamed on classical artists.

"Do you realize that how our notions of color might have been inspired by flowers?" Adam mused.

"You think so?" Joan answered blandly, letting him follow his train of thought.

"Yeah. Think how rare colors are in nature otherwise. Blue sky, green grass and leaves, various shades of dirt, that's it. Colorful jewels, but the average person rarely comes into contact with them. Rainbows are temporary. Colorful birds -- canaries, bluebirds, robins -- but you're rarely aware of them unless you keep pets. It's flowers that stay in one piece and return their color for weeks. I think it's flowers that originally encouraged artists to expand the palettes--" and he continued in that pleasant mode for the whole trip.

They reached their section of Rome about 4:00. Grace was still at her SEEDS office; Luke had gone out somewhere, and so Adam and Joan were essentially alone.

"Draw a sketch of me, Adam," Joan commanded as soon as they settled in their room.

"What sort of sketch?" asked Adam, though he looked interested already.

"Whatever you like."

Adam looked around the room for inspiration, and his eyes fell on the bouquet.

They decided on Joan as Flora, the Roman goddess. Joan put a couple of blossoms in her hair. Adam asked her to hold the rest of the bouquet, shorn of their artificial wrapping, just below her bared breasts. The breasts were crucial, Adam explained, because they too were a symbol of fertility in the animal world, and besides he wanted "Flora" to appear with no hint of manmade technology, not even woven cloth. Joan didn't mind the exposure, though she would be very upset if anybody else, even Luke or Grace, were to see the sketch with her nipples on view.

Afterwards she walked over to look at the sketch. "It's lovely, Adam."

"Because I love you, Jane."

"Expressing your emotions is the main thing, isn't it?"

Adam fell silent for a while. "Yeah, I see what you're doing, Jane, and you're right. Art shouldn't be a competition, one guy trying to best another. Each artist has individual, unique emotions to express. Michelangelo's aren't mine. Do you know what everybody said about Michelangelo in his day? That he was terrible."

"Really?" said Joan, genuinely surprised.

"Yeah. They didn't mean awful, they meant he was awe-inspiring. The giant heroes, the all-powerful God -- that's why he tried to express, and he succeeded. But it isn't me, and I realize it now." He hesitated. "I'm sorry I ruined your day, Jane."

"You didn't. Besides, I got a mission now. Help me on that, and I'll say that we're even."

"What is it?"

And she told him about the roots.

TBC


	8. Jeanne the Pawn

**JOAN OF ITALIA**

**Chapter 8**

**Jeanne the Pawn**

_(Author's Note: the story about the crucifix is traditional, and so is the story of the Englishman who feared divine punishment for killing a saint, though they were not necessarily the same man)_

_(Author's Note: since Michel is Italian, and Luke is reading an unedited document, I followed the European method of using dashes rather than quote marks to represent conversation inside his story.)_

Joan and Adam were planning to do a day trip to Florence for Tuesday, and asked Luke to come along. Luke was tempted, because he had read about the famous dome and speculations on how the builders could have managed without modern technology. But he didn't to want sit through his sister's lovey-dovey flirtations with her new husband (as Grace had put it), and besides, he was curious about the story that Michel had sent him. The next morning, he caught a streetcar back to the students' district.

"Ah, _bon giorno,_ Luke. What brings you here?"

"That story about Joan of Arc -- do you have other parts of it?"

"Ah, si, I have written the gran scena, but not the material in between."

"Could I see it?"

"_Si_-- you could have simply asked me to Email it."

"Yeah. I, um, wanted to read it on a side-trip, when I didn't have my computer with me."

"_Fa bene_, I will print it out. It is a pleasure that you are so interested in my story."

A few minutes later, Luke boarded a streetcar to nowhere, and read through the story while passing by the historical relics of two and a half millennia.

---------

---Greetings, Oidli, said the Temporal Computer. How did your mission to Constantinople go?

---Never mind that, Oidli 3 said. I was riding through a town and I heard a proclamation that "Jeanne la Pucelle" had been condemned by the Inquisition, and sentenced to burn as a witch. That's the girl I talked to just five years ago, isn't she?

---Do not worry. Everything is going according to plan.

---Do you mean that you have a plan to rescue her?

---No. A plan to use her death. Were she to be released now, there would be too much doubt about whether she has been inspired by God or the devil. The Inquisition has besmirched her reputation. But a heroic death will create a martyr, as it did in the case of Jesus of Nazareth's own death.

---Heroic death? You're talking about letting a girl be burnt alive!

---My analysis of her character is that she will be faithful to her ideals.

----Ideals? What ideals? To God and the saints? They never really spoke to her. I did. And I don't want her to be faithful to me. Her blood will be on my hands if she dies because I gave her a fake vision five years ago. I'm going after her, now.

-----Wait, Oidli! Do not run! You have not yet told me of Constantinople!

(At this point there was a break in the narrative)

----You must understand. I am the true sorcerer. The maid was the victim of my magic. You must release her.

Oidli trembled, realizing that if his ruse worked then he would be in danger of being burnt himself. His only hope was that his fellow time travelers would be loyal and rescue him, in spite of his defiance of the Computer's plan.

----The Inquisition has decided otherwise. Begone, said the Duke.

----But they did not have sufficient information.

----They had the guidance of a higher power.

Supposedly the officer meant God, of course, but Oidli realized who was really giving the orders. The English needed Jeanne declared a witch, because how otherwise could they explain her defeat of good English soldiers? Having her instead revealed as somebody else's tool would not suit their story.

(Another break)

Jeanne was tied to the stake, dressed only in a flimsy robe that failed to cover her lower legs or her cleavage. The women of Oidli's culture would see nothing wrong in dressing like that, but by contemporary standards she was nearly naked, and that was part of her degradation.

-----I have a last request, she called out.

-----You are not in a position to make requests, said the Duke of Bedford.

-----I wish to behold a cross as I die, that I can think on my Redeemer.

-----It is a holy wish, said the friar, turning to the Duke.

-----We have not the time. Continue with the execution.

Soldiers threw more logs around the stake. The official executioner held aloft a torch.

-----Ma'amselle! cried a voice near Oidli. Look on this.

An English soldier had tied an arrow to his pike so that the two weapons formed the shape of a crude cross, and was holding it up so that Jeanne could see it. Oidli was humiliated; this enemy was doing more to help Joan than Oidli himself.

-----Merci, kind sir.

-----Put that down! ordered the Duke in annoyance.

-----For shame! You would remove a symbol of God? said the friar.

The Duke was annoyed, but clearly he could not argue with the Church when he needed them to justify his killing.

------Burn the witch.

Oidli could not look. He averted his eyes, but the sound of the tormented girl still reached his ears.

-------Augggh! May God and the saints receive my soul!

The English soldier with the cross was of sterner stuff: he looked at the burning victim, but with an expression of horror. He had done more to ease her dying agony than Oidli himself.

----- We are lost! We have burnt a saint!

(end of fragment)

----------------

Luke was rattled by his reading, and not only by the gruesome ending. To Michel, of course, Jeanne d'Arc was simply a mysterious historical character around whom he could write an exciting story. To the Girardis she was far more. Even Luke's mother, who knew nothing of her daughter's weird activities, had considered her daughter a proper model for her painting of Jeanne d'Arc. Luke's sister had been fascinated by her namesake ever since Driesbach's history class. But none of them had squarely faced the question: did God abandon Jeanne d'Arc to die horribly? And could He do it again?

Three years ago Joan had had conventional but vague notions of God. Once convinced that He existed, she took for granted that He matched the common notions of Him: that he was all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good. Luke had approached theology from a different angle. Basically he accepted God's existence because Einstein did, as a highly abstract entity representing the law of the Universe. Merging that with Joan's friend had been difficult; it was like particle-wave duality, where you simply had to believe two things at once.

In Michel's story a distinctly un-godlike meddler had used special effects to bamboozle Jeanne d'Arc into thinking she was inspired by God. Could the same thing have happened again, five and a half centuries later? Sir Arthur Clarke, in a witticism known to all science nerds, had remarked that a sufficiently advanced technology could be indistinguishable from magic. Luke had even considered the possibility a year ago when Joan had first told him her secret. But "God"'s rescue of Grace's suicidal mother, and the general thrill of befriending such a powerful being, had lulled his suspicions. Now they were coming back.

Luke had been in Europe three days, and the general psychological effect on him was to help him see things a new way. Here there was a cynicism about God, that he was unused to. Modern Romans would look around at 500 year-old churches and think, not of the Glory of God, but a fallen theocracy that had pretended to speak for the Almighty. Was "God" tricking Joan? Would he lure her to an early death if it suited his purposes? He had, after all, let her lose Judith and suffer an attack of Lyme Disease. Should Luke be protecting his sister?

"_La_ _Fine_!" called out the conductor. The streetcar had reached the end of the line, wherever that was, and Luke was the only one on it.

"Sorry," he called out in English. "I passed my stop by accident and thought I'd get off on the way back."

The conductor shrugged. "_Un euro._"

"OK." He got out the money and handed it to the conductor, who seemed satisfied. The streetcar made a loop and headed back toward the center of Rome. But Luke knew that his own thoughts were not going to return to their own courses any time soon.

TBC


	9. Scratching Sores and Scratching Backs

**JOAN OF ITALIA**

**Chapter 9 Scratching Sores and Scratching Backs**

_(AUTHOR'S NOTE: Caravaggio is a real artist of the Renaissance, but the painting Marghareta mentions is fictitious.)_

Half an hour after cheering up Adam, and with her breasts decently covered once more, Joan went down into the hotel's little lobby. Luke was sitting at a table, hunched up with a wine glass, the picture of a melancholy drinker -- except that Joan spotted a Coca-cola can on the table and knew that Luke had not been imbibing anything stronger than soda. Must've had a spat with Grace, Joan thought.

She sat opposite her brother. "We have a new mission," she said. The statement was vague enough that even if somebody who knew English was eavesdropping, it wouldn't give much away.

"You mean you have," said Luke, not looking up.

"Well, of course She was talking to me, but I'm sure She meant all of us."

"Count me out."

"Why?"

"We have free will, don't we? I'm exercising it."

"But our missions have always had good ripples."

"Yeah. And I've heard Pavlov always treated his dogs well until it was time to cut their throats." Luke said sarcastically.

"Fine. It's just a matter of searching for our roots. I can do it myself."

"Sure you can. Do you read Italian?"

"Oh," moaned Joan, chagrined. The widespread use of English as a second language in Europe had distracted her from the fact that records, particularly old ones, would be in the local language. High school French would probably not be sufficient. "Do you?"

"I might be able to spell it out, based on Latin. I studied some Latin to understand scientific terminology. But I'm not interested in going on some mission without knowing the reason."

"Luke, do you know something I don't about the missions/"

"I don't KNOW anything. I've just had a change of attitude. I don't want to talk about it." He got up and walked out the door onto the Roman sidewalk. Joan decided to let him go.

She thought that she understood her brother's attitude. Grace had the most elaborate mission they had ever received: join a famine-relief organization and help out in the Third World. It meant that Luke was separated from his beloved during the day, with a possible permanent separation at the end of two weeks. He and Grace were together only in nights and evenings. Joan had no idea what Luke and Grace did in bed, and didn't want to know, but apparently it wasn't enough to compensate for the rest. But instead of blaming Grace, Luke blamed God.

"Joana?" came a feminine voice from the door. It was Marghareta.

"Bon giorno," said Joan politely.

"Hi." The Italian girl engaged in some break-the-ice chat, which sounded particularly artificial because she was probably quoting English language lessons. To Joan's relief she got down to business eventually. "Is your husband in?"

"He's resting upstairs," Joan said evasively. Adam was, in fact, chagrined over his jealousy of great artists earlier that day.

"I had something to ask him. I am taking a course in Caravaggio this fall, and I am seeking a particular painting, the DEATH OF JEZEBEL. I hear that it is in America, in some private collection, and the owner will not even give out information on the Internet. I thought your Adamo might be able to find out about it."

"I have a better idea," said Joan. "My mom is an art teacher, and she's got some connections in the art world. She might do a better job of finding your painting."

"_Grazie_. How can I repay you?"

"Actually -- I need some help looking at Italian documents. I'm searching for my roots."

"_Le radici_," Marghareta said dryly. "Aristocrats were always talking about their pedigrees, like horses, and the rest of us were tired of hearing about it. And now _le Americani_ are doing it."

"It's different," said Joan. "In America the idea was invented by Alex Haley, an African-American. He said everybody had ancestors that they could take pride in, regardless of their status in the world. It's really a democratic idea."

"Interesting point of view," Marghareta said. "OK, I will help. But I work in the mornings -- it will have to be in afternoons."

"That's all right."

"I will come here at 13:30."

"Um, okay." She would have to ask Luke what thirteen o'clock was, when he was in a better mood. Otherwise things were going well. Her mission would progress, Marghareta would find information that she needed, and her mother would probably enjoy the detective work looking up Carry Joe or whatever that artist's name was. Good ripples all around. Why couldn't Luke see that?

TBC


	10. Digging for the Roots

**JOAN OF ITALIA**

**Chapter 10 Digging for the Roots**

_(AUTHOR'S NOTE: San Matteo is imaginary, but I think I have the history of the region accurate)_

"I called my Mom last night and asked her to start the search," the American girl commented as she drove Marghareta and herself to the archives the next day. "And I looked up Jezebel's death last evening,"

"In the Bible?"

"No, on the Internet. Pretty gory story. Not only does she lose being queen, but some eunuchs throw her out a window to impress the new king. And maybe to get revenge for taking their -- um, you know."

"Caravaggio liked violent stories. And as long as they were in the Bible, he had an excuse to paint them."

"What about you?"

"_Scusi_?"

"You say you're not religious, but you seem to be fascinated by religious art."

Marghareta thought over the implied question.

Marghareta had once believed in _il Dio_, as she had once believed in Pinocchio and _la Befana_, the good witch of Christmas. She wasn't sure what made her stop, except that God seemed so distant, and attempts to figure Him out just got her into contradictions. Reading the Bible, it seemed to her that Jesus must have been a rebel against Rome, with some utopian ideas about how much better lives men would live after the Revolution. Wasn't that why the Romans had condemned him to a horrible death? Other than that, Jesus and his followers had seemed men of their time, believing that disease was caused by demons, and that a doubting Thomas was more valuable than a loyal Magdalen because he was male, or that the most frightening image they could think of for the Apocalypse was Four Horsemen.

Then there was the Church, which claimed to be carrying on Jesus' legacy but seemed to Marghareta to be a self-perpetuating bureaucracy whose ideas had little relationship to its founders'. It was easier to obsess about the role of contraceptives during sex than to alienate rich people by telling them to give all their goods to the poor.

She had revealed her doubts to her parents a few years ago, and was surprised when they simply accepted her point of view, when orthodox theology would have encouraged them to save her soul by winning her back to the Church. So maybe they weren't too committed either.

Yet it was her parents who were, indirectly, responsible for the most religious moment she had ever had. At the funeral after the accident, they had gotten a priest, because it seemed the proper thing to do. And one of the priest's prayers made a deep impression on her.

_Give them eternal rest, O Lord,_

_And let perpetual light shine upon them._

Perpetual light, yes, that was something that Marghareta would wish for them. But what if there was no God to do the shining?

But all that was far too personal to tell to the a_mericana. "_I like the ART. And for a traditional Italian artist, there were only two possible subject matters. Ancient mythology, and religious. I can enjoy mythological art without believing in Apollo, and I can enjoy religious art without believing in God. But what about you? They say Americans are very religious."

"I don't go to church. But I do believe in God, and in doing God's will."

"But how do you tell God's will?"

There was a long pause, and l'a_mericana_ finally answered, "It isn't easy."

It sounded as if the girl had some personal secrets of her own.

They reached the Archives Building, explained their purpose, and were sent to a little room with a computer terminal. Signora Girardi-Rove seemed intrigued at seeing familiar computer displays translated into an unfamiliar language. "It wants to know what town you want to search." Margherta interpreted.

"According to my Dad, my ancestors' home town was called San Matteo."

Marghareta entered the request, and after a few seconds the computer replied "_Non Trovati"_ -- not found.

_"E misterioso,"_ Marghareta muttered. She tried to rephrase the query, using the Girardi name, and got only Girardis from other section from the country. Finally they called in one of the archive technicians, who logged in and put in more powerful queries of her own. Marghareta translated her analysis to l'A_mericana. _"The San Matteo records aren't here. The town hall was destroyed in World War II and the central government never got copies of the records. Back then, of course, it would have meant copying tonnes of paper -- there wasn't any electronic transfer."

"Where is San Matteo?"

The analyst could brought up a map program on the computer. "C'e!" said Marghareta. "About 100 kilometers southeast of Rome."

The tourist got out a calculator and punched it in. "About 62 miles. I should be able to get there and back in three hours. I'll call Adam I might come back later. You don't have to come, Marghareta; you've kept your promise."

"No, I will come. _Sono curiosa_." Marghareta was careful not to admit that what she was curious about was not the roots, which were meaningless to her, but _l'americana_. There was something _misteriosa_ about her. Speaking English cast a peculiar ambiguity on relationships. Speaking Italian you had to decide who was a friend, to be addressed as _tu_, and who was a casual acquaintance, to be addressed as _voi_ or _lei_. In English you weren't sure where you were. "Besides, you may need an interpreter. Southern Italy, they speak less English."

"Thanks."

Marghareta punched for a map and they got back in the Girardi's rented car.

Once they were out of the Roman traffic, Marghareta decided to probe a bit. "You say that you believe in a God. Which one?"

"They're all the same one," Signora Girardi-Rove said absently.

"_Perdona me?"_

The other seemed to become more alert. "I mean, there's only one God."

"Really? For centuries people talked an imperious God who demanded that all people worship him with the correct ritual, or be thrown into Dante's Inferno. Then in the twentieth century we hear of a God of love and forgiveness. I think the change happened earlier in your country.

"He told me He wasn't responsible for all the cruelty done in His name."

"He? Your _pronomi_ are confusing me. Who told you?"

Another pause. "A holy man. One whose opinion I trust."

_She had to think of an answer_, thought Marghareta. _Why?_

She steered away from religious subjects after that. The American girl, looking at a passing field where horses were grazing, commented "Grace might like the horses. But the country doesn't look as beautiful as it did near Florence."

"No, southern Italy has traditionally been poor. Originally it was a separate nation altogether: the Kingdom of Naples, and the kings didn't care much about how the peasants lived. A lot of the people who emigrated to your country came from South Italy; they were the most desperate."

"Bad ripples last a long time, it seems," said the other girl.

"Ripples?"

"A word that my husband and I like to use. Cause and effect, over and over. Like ripples in a pond."

"Lovely image."

Eventually they reached the spot identified on their map as San Matteo. But they found themselves confronted with a large metal fence, through which they saw craters and burnt buildings. No sign of people.

Marghareta found a sign on the fence and translated it for her companion.

_"This was the former site of the village of San Matteo. Converted to a fort by the Mussolini government in 1943 and destroyed by Allied airpower in 1945. By order of the National government, this site is to be maintained in its current state as an example of the destructiveness of war."_

"It's terrible," said the American girl, staring. "We don't have war damage like this in the US."

"Atlanta in your Civil War? I saw _Via col vento."_

"What? Oh, Gone with the Wind. No, Atlanta was rebuilt. It's a big city now."

Marghareta looked at her map. "There's another village 2 kilometers from here, Dantepoli. Maybe they can give us more information."

They drove to the nearby village, and Marghareta had the inspiration of consulting the Post Office. Who would know better where people lived?

"San Matteo?" repeated the postmistress, whose accent made clear that she was native to the region. "Before my time, but I heard the story. Mussolini expelled a lot of villagers to make room for the fort. Many others left because they disliked the military presence. Nearly all remaining civilians fled when the Allies drew near."

"And we can't trace them?"

"Those were chaotic times, signorina, Besides, many of those who fled probably wanted to disappear from the sight of the Fascisti, particularly since there were Nazi soldiers accompanying them by that stage of the war."

Marghareta broke the news to her companion. To her surprise the American girl seemed neither upset nor frustrated, but merely puzzled. "But why did he ask me to search for roots that couldn't be found?"

"Who? Some man of your family? They may not have known about the war damage."

"Maybe seeing the war damage was the real point."

The remark meant nothing to Marghareta, but that was not new in dealing with Signora Girardi-Rove. She was definitely _una misteriosa._

_TBC_


	11. A Horse of a Different Color

**JOAN OF ITALIA**

**Chapter 11 A Horse of a Different Color**

_(Author's Note: I revised the end of this chapter slightly after Hannora pointed out that a five-foot wall would be too serious a challenge. Thank you, Hannora)_

As she got ready for bed that night, Grace remarked "I'm putting on my sturdiest jeans tomorrow. They're taking me out to a farm near Naples to test my riding skills."

"If the tests don't work out, do they cancel their plans for you?" Luke asked from the bed, trying to sound concerned.

"Of course not. I just get more lessons." Then the implications of Luke's question got through to her. "Why should I fail? I've been riding horses for a year, and I was trained by an expert. THE expert, who created horses."

"No reason," sighed Luke, sorry that he had brought it up.

Grace glared at Luke -- which created an odd effect, because she was naked above the waist at the moment, which normally made her look very alluring. "You WANT me to fail, don't you?"

"I---"

"What's happened? You've been so supportive of me through all this! You've even offered to come with me. Now it sounds like you're getting cold feet -- and you want me to stay behind with you to warm your bed!"

"Warm my bed? Is this how are you regard our making love?"

Grace rarely got flustered, but that did it. "No! I didn't mean -- let's back up. What brought this on?"

Luke explained about Michel's Joan of Arc story. While he was telling Grace climbed in on her side of the bed, though her body language implied that she was still annoyed. Having an angry woman lying inches away, when you were near-naked and vulnerable, was a rather frightening experience, and Luke was tempted to get out and find somewhere else to sleep. But the room's sofa was too short, and the floor looked uncomfortable, and he could scarcely barge in on his sister and her husband, much less ask the landlady for a separate room in which to hide from his "wife". So Luke stood his ground, so to speak.

"You're letting yourself get upset by an amateur science fiction story?" demanded Grace.

"Don't sneer, Grace. Science fiction is a way of dealing with unusual ideas. Somebody -- call him God, call him the Temporal Computer -- called on Joan to risk her life for a cause, then abandoned her to a horrible death when she was no longer needed. Why can't it happen again with you? The Third World is a dangerous place. You could catch a disease, or get killed as an innocent bystander in somebody else's war. Remember that God let Joan catch Lyme Disease, and let Ryan Hunter's girlfriend get killed, after they had served Him faithfully."

"But I'll be on a mission. Wouldn't He need to keep me alive and safe to carry it out?"

"Depends what the real mission is. God sent Joan on a wild goose chase today, trying to find genealogical records that had been destroyed decades ago. Now Joan's back to Square 1, trying to figure what He really meant." Luke thought it over. "Suppose that helping the poor in general isn't the mission. Suppose that there is an important person in the famine area -- say, the next Gandhi, or somebody that could bring peace to the Middle East -- and your real mission is to keep him or her alive. And once the crisis is past, God doesn't need you."

"Now you're grasping at straws."

"Maybe."

"I still think going to the Third World is my calling. Not something God has imposed on me, but something in my nature." She hesitated. "It's weird -- my having faith in something and you being the skeptic. But I know that you're doing all this because you love me and don't want me to get hurt, so I'm not mad."

She rolled over and gave Luke a kiss. Then she rolled back, taking Luke with her, so that he ended up lying on top of her. Not the most subtle of invitations--

After a few minutes Luke felt that he could follow Grace anywhere, whatever the risk. But it passed in the cold light of day. Luke was in a volatile mood.

-----

Early the next morning two of Grace's instructors picked her up in a small Italian car and headed south. One was a sixtyish man who was usually addressed as Maestro, which sounded to Grace like an orchestral conductor but actually just meant the Master of a subject. He was dressed as impeccably as he was in the SEEDS office. The other was a thirtyish Frenchwoman named Madame Marque, and it was strange to see her decked out today in tight jeans.

Unless Joan's course into southern Italy yesterday, the teachers' route followed the western coastline. Grace was accustomed to the coastal plain of Maryland, but this terrain was more like America's Pacific coast, with hills and mountains coming all the way to the water. She had heard that Naples was built on steep hills, like San Francisco; one of its favorite songs was even named _Funicoli, Funicola_. Mount Vesuvius, the most famous volcano in history, was in the vicinity.

But as they approached the city, they turned off the _autostrada_ onto a local road, then an unpaved dirt path.

They stopped at a farm nestled between two hills. Grace was surprised at its small size, but reminded herself that land was expensive in Europe and that a charity can't splurge on expenses. They passed fields planted with SEED's genetically engineered grain, then a corral of horses, and finally stopped at a smaller corral with one animal inside. Madame got out and started walking back along the driveway, while Grace stared at the horse.

"It looks old," she commented.

"Si," said the Maestro. "That's the idea. Hobbyists in advanced countries can afford the best mounts, _la crème de la crème_. But today you are to imagine yourself in a very poor country ridden with famine. People who owned good horses would have sold them off, to buy food or get transport to a more fertile land. You will be left with the less desirable ones."

_"Capisco." _

_"Biene_. To start, let me see you saddle the horse."

The corral had a gate, but Grace climbed over the fence, hoping that would look more macho. The horse shied away, as most intelligent beings did when they encountered Grace. Suppressing her irritation, Grace used the soothing techniques Diana had taught her, until it allowed her to put on the saddle and bridle. Finally she hoisted herself up on its back.

_"Eccellente! _And now, you are to follow this course," he said, handing her a map. "You are to pretend that you are travelling between two villages. Madame will follow you on her own horse, and observe." He nodded to the side, and Grace saw her teacher mounted on an animal of her own. So that was why the jeans. "Pretend that she is not there."

_"Capisco,"_ said Grace. It was just Italian for _I understand_, but to an American it aroused memories of THE GODFATHER, very incongruous in the current situation. She concentrated on the map, a professional local map with her course inked in. It ran near the country road but not on it; obviously she was supposed to go cross-country as if better paths did not exist. She turned her horse's head in the proper direction.

There were subtleties here: a foolish student would try to impress the instructors by galloping off, a speed that could not possibly be sustained. So Grace started off slowly, trying to get familiar with the new horse and size up its weaknesses and strengths.

The ground was uneven, and obviously had been chosen for that purpose. Grace had to constantly ride uphill and downhill, sometimes zigzagging to avoid to steep a grade. After about half an hour she stopped to check her map again and was dismayed how little area she had covered. This was going to be a long day. And yet she was careful to pace herself, giving her horse opportunities to rest and to relieve itself.

After about an hour and half the course evened out, and in fact became so devoid of problems that she was wondering why it was included. Another hour and a half later, she realized why: this was BORING, and it was supposed to be boring, to test her patience. Most girls, even the most enthusiastic equestriennes, might limit that time in the saddle to maybe two hours. This was work, not play.

Fortunately Grace had undergone worse, fleeing Arcadia on horseback last January, and riding a long journey in EdenWorld, and had discovered that the trick was to focus the mind on something pleasant. And so she thought back on last night's lovemaking with Luke. Madame, keeping an eye on her, might be startled at the erotic imagery going through Grace's head, but of course she couldn't read Grace's mind.

But thinking of the lovemaking also reminded Grace of the preceding argument. She had finally pacified Luke by saying the Third World job was her choice and not just a "mission" imposed from outside. But suppose that inner feeling had also been planted in her soul by G-d? That was no escaping that. But would G-d deliberately put a self-destructive course in her mind. She thought of how G-d as He usually presented Himself to her, Diana the Cowgirl. She could not attribute Machiavellian thoughts to Diana -- but Diana was only a façade for G-d, wasn't she? In Hebrew terms, a _Shekinah_, what God chose to show of Himself.

_Have faith, Grace._ It was something she rarely told herself to do.

The terrain finally became more interesting -- Grace would say, more irritating. There was a long slope uphill, and then Grace found a stone wall in her path.

She estimated it at roughly three feet tall (this being Europe, it was probably designed an even meter in height) . From her vantage point on top of the horse she could see over it easily, and noted a clear patch on the other side. Diana had taught her how to jump fences.

Grace backtracked several meters, so that her horse could be build up momentum for the jump. As she did so she spotted Madame watching her from her own mount, with a non-committal expression.

Grace turned back toward the wall and tried to plan out the jump. Then she turned her horse's head to the right and slowly headed downhill. She would circle around the wall instead.

-----

On reaching her destination, Grace was relieved to find that they had brought a horse van, so that they would not have to ride back to the farm. Grace's backside was aching and she suspected Madame's was too, thought she knew no polite way to ask (_Madame, comment va votre cul_?) Madame was making her report to the Maestro, in Italian.

The Maestro turned to Grace and switched to English. "You did well, except that you departed from your course at the end, and lost an hour."

"I know. I didn't want to risk my horse. It might be too old to make the jump, and if it got injured, it might have to be put down."

"In the Third World such risks might be necessary."

"Yeah, but we're not the Third World. We're in Europe doing a simulation. That wasn't worth risking a horse's life. Let me get on Madame's horse, and I'll prove to you that I can do it."

"No need, you argued it nicely. Very well, I will record this as a success. This evening we will enjoy ourselves in Napoli, and return to the farm tomorrow."

"There's another test?"

"Horses may not be available in a poor country," observed Madame. "Have you ever ridden a donkey? There are differences."

_Putting my ass on an ass. Great._

_TBC_


	12. In the Image of God

**JOAN OF ITALIA**

**Chapter 12 In the Image of God**

_(Author's Note: The CONVERSION OF SAINT PAUL and the ECSTASY OF SAINT TERESA are both real works of art, displayed in churches in Rome)._

That evening, Joan borrowed Luke's laptop so that she could communicate with her parents. It was 10:00 PM in Rome and 5:00 PM in Arcadia, one of the few times where communication was easy on both ends.

Of course Joan couldn't discuss what was uppermost in her mind: Luke's claim that they were being conned by a deity who had his own secret agenda. The parents still knew nothing about their daughter's secret life over the past three years. Adam looked over his wife's shoulder as she typed her messages.

_San Matteo turned out to be a dead end. No documents left, and if we had relatives there, they disappeared 60 years ago. Maybe Dad could figure out a cold case like that, but I'm stymied._

A few seconds, then:

_This is Dad. Don't worry about it, Joan. You made a valiant try and it failed. Don't let it ruin the rest of your vacation._

Joan replied:

_Thanks, Dad. But I already owe the Italian girl who helped translate things. Are we any closer on that?_

A few seconds delay, then:

_This is Mom. I've sent out some Emails. Old Wydafeller in Baltimore thinks that he's heard of a Caravaggio about Jezebel, but you know how hard he is to deal with. It may take time._

_I will tell Marghareta that. At least we're on a path._

After a few pleasantries, Joan signed off, and they got ready for bed.

That night Joan showed little interest, for the first time since she had given up her virginity to him on their wedding night. That told Adam just how worried his Jane was. To Adam his brother-in-law's skepticism about God was a purely theoretical matter, like his string theories. What real evidence was there that they were being manipulated? But Joan trusted her brother's instincts, enough to get uneasy.

----

They saw neither of the others when they went down to breakfast the next morning. Grace was still down in Naples; Luke had gone out early, leaving a message that he wanted to see areas associated with the trials of Bruno and Galileo. Adam had no idea who Bruno was, but did not let that bother him.

"I've made a list of artworks to see today," he told his wife. "I think you'll be interested in some of them."

"Why?"

"Let it be a surprise. Several surprises, in fact."

His Jane smiled, understanding what he was trying to do for her. "OK".

----

"That's _weird,"_ said Joan.

Indeed it was, because in a little chapel, surrounded by Renaissance beauty, was the picture of a man who had just fallen of a horse. He was sprawled upside down at the bottom of the picture, and the horse's rump was nearly the most prominent thing in the whole composition. Yet it depicted one of the most crucial events in Christian religious history -- the vision that converted St. Paul to Christianity on the road to Damascus.

"Caravaggio was always weird, picking unusual ways of presenting the Biblical scenes," said Adam. "This is the same artist who did the Jezebel picture that your friend is looking for. The thing is, look at St. Paul. Even upside down and with his face turned away, you can tell that he's undergoing some profound vision, and that's what makes it a great religious painting."

"If you say so. I just think it's a good thing Grace didn't see that before going for her riding test -- might have jinxed her."

"Next we're going to see something weirder."

"Not another horse, I hope. I don't really like horses."

"Nope."

------

"Oh my God," exclaimed Joan.

They were looking at the image of a woman, seemingly asleep, but in the grip of a violent dream that had her gasping for breath and convulsing her fingers into claws. Next to her they saw the dream: an angel, unusually masculine (the drapery revealed a male nipple) stabbing her with an arrow. The amazing thing was that the images, which seemed to be violently in motion, had actually been carved in marble over three centuries ago.

"Bernini's ECSTASY OF ST. TERESA," announced Adam.

"She looks like she's having an organism," said Joan, with her usual talent for malapropisms.

"Yeah, you aren't the first to notice that. The Freudian symbol of an arrow, and her response to it. People have wondered for 350 years just what Bernini had in mind -- and, for that matter, exactly what happened to St. Teresa."

"I don't think I want to know."

"Yeah, but that's my point. I showed you these two works of art for a reason, Jane. Saints Teresa and Paul were great people, but even for them en encounter with God was a terrifying experience. But it has never been that for you. I think that, for you, God has held back the terror, so to speak. He doesn't want your awe or your obedience, He wants your love. Why? Because I think He loves you, in particular. And that's why I think He'll never betray you."

"Yes! You're right! There's only one time when I was overwhelmed, and that was my own doing; I insisted on seeing the "big picture", and got a vision that knocked me out. Oh, Adam, you've taken a burden off my mind." She gave him a big hug and kiss. Some tourists stared, finding it odd behavior in a church, but Adam didn't care. His Jane was happy again.

-----

"So, where now?" Joan asked on the steps of the church.

"I'd like to go to the Sistine Chapel," said Adam.

"We've been there."

"I think that the greatest concentration of art in the world deserves a second visit. But if you'd rather---"

"No, I owe you today for cheering me up," said his wife

"No, we've even. You cheered me up after Florence--"

_"There's beggary in love that can be reckoned_," said a voice behind them. They turned around and saw a priest; a Jesuit, Adam thought from his attire. "Wisdom from Shakespeare. Bless you, my children." He left with a wave, when Adam might have expected the sign of a cross.

"You think that was--" Adam began.

"God, right. We better go to the Sistine Chapel," said Joan.

-----

While his wife contemplated the famous ceiling, Adam sought out a guide that spoke English and seemed particularly knowledgeable about the art. After talking shop for a while to establish his own artistic credentials, Adam launched into his real subject.

"Wasn't there a taboo against representing God in a painting?"

"You're talking about the Ten Commandments prohibition against images. But that had been interpreted in different ways through the centuries, called the Iconoclastic Controversy. Some artists played safe, substituting an angel for God or using disembodied hands to represent the divine workings. But Michelangelo's representation didn't get a lot of criticism for it. Oddly enough, some people think it CREATED the image of God as an old bearded man."

"That's something else I'm curious about. Michelangelo was quite the loner, wasn't he? Never married, no known mistresses. He thought of Da Vinci and Raphael as hated rivals, not colleagues. He obeyed the Pope but had no strong feelings about him."

"All that is true."

"Is it possible that there is some relationship that we don't know about?"

"There is always speculation about homosexuality, which in his era was highly illegal and would have to be covered up. But there's no strong evidence of that; it's based mainly on his preference for portraying male nudes, and the inevitable gossippy reaction to the lack of mistresses, in a Rome where even the Pope often had one."

"Yeah, thank you."

Adam rejoined his wife, who like many tourists was rubbing her neck after staring up at the ceiling for so long. "Ow, got a crick. I heard you talking to the guide, Adam. What were you driving at?"

"Gotta theory."

"What is it?"

"Think over the clues. Michelangelo boldly portrayed God in an era where the ideas were usually more abstract. And what's more odd, he portrayed him _differently_. Up there on the ceiling, God is an old man. But THERE, in the Last Judgement painting, He is a vigorous youth. Now, who would have thought of picturing God as different people?"

Joan gasped. "Me."

"Exactly. I think God appeared to Michelangelo as he appeared to you -- in the guise of human strangers. But of course Michelangelo couldn't talk about it -- in his era it would have sounded blasphemous. So from our point of view there is a mysterious void in his life."

"And his missions?" asked Joan, and she answered her own question. "To create masterpieces, of course."

"Right."

"And he DID," Joan went on, looking at the ceiling again. "Which leads me to wonder: what does he expect from ME?"

TBC


	13. The Devil You Know

**JOAN OF ITALIA**

**Chapter 13 The Devil You Know**

_(AUTHOR'S NOTE: The historical notes on alchemy and on Galileo are from the 1960's science documentary THE ASCENT OF MAN. Some of the other tidbits are from books on the history of science by Isaac Asimov)_

Two things surprised Luke on his tour of Rome. One was that Michel was also on the tour; somehow it was hard to remember that Michel, though Italian, was as new to Rome as Luke would have been to New York. The second surprise was that one of the highlights of the tour was a stop at the Rome Post Office. It was an ancient building and "Post Office" was just its current function; three and a half centuries ago it was a meeting place of the Inquisition, and the site of their most famous inquiry, with Galileo Galilei.

"People often mistakenly think that the persecution of Galileo was typical of the Church's attitude toward science," said the guide. "Actually it was an example of its times. The seventeenth century was one of the bloodiest centuries in European history, where religion and politics were in a poisonous embrace and questioning any authority could be treated as treasonous and heretical. In Germany there was the Thirty Years War between Catholics and Protestants, which is thought to have killed millions of people. In England there was a three-way battle among the Anglicans, Catholics, and Puritans far power; it included the beheading of a king. Even in far-off America there were the Salem witch-burnings--"

"Hangings," Luke said without thinking.

"_Perdonate?"_ said the guide, annoyed.

"Nobody was burned in Salem," explained Luke. "That's a widespread myth. The victims were hanged, which was bad enough."

"Um, yes," said the guide, and he soon picked up another subject. "It's also of interest that Galileo was not executed, was not tortured, was not even put in prison. He was kept under guard at his own villa, which by the standards of the time was quite lenient. The real victim of persecution was Giordano Bruno--"

Afterwards, on the tourist bus, Michel was careful to sit by Luke.

"Interesting about Salem," he said.

"Yeah," Luke said glumly. "I should have kept my mouth shut. How would I like it if somebody interrupted my lecture, even if I was wrong and the heckler was right?"

"Ha, people always like the melodramatic over the truth, so it's good to set the record straight once in a while. _Par exemplo_, the story is that before the time of Cristoforo Colombo, people thought the Earth was flat. That is nonsense; Dante described a round Earth two centuries earlier, and even pointed out that the time of day depended on where you were on the globe."

"I'd heard that. Some Greek philosopher even estimated its size, and got it RIGHT."

Science wasn't Michel's only interest at the moment. He looked around the bus. "So. Is your _bella donna_ on the tour?"

Luke was puzzled; to him "belladonna" was a poison mushroom. Then he remembered that _bella donna_ was literally Italian for "fair lady", which was still an odd way to describe Grace.

"Grace is visiting the countryside south of here, riding horses. It's not just for fun; she's demonstrating skill for a job--" Luke started to explain about SEEDS.

"Missionary work?"

"Not exactly. Grace is Jewish. A secular version of it."

"Good for her."

Luke, in turn, asked politely about Marghareta, though Joan had already told him about their own trip yesterday. Then he asked about what really interested him. "Have you written any more of your story?"

_"Sempre la storia!"_ exclaimed Michel in mock exasperation. "No. I have a vague idea that the Time Travellers will continue their attempts to change history, and Oidli will try to thwart them. But I have not thought of a conflict for them. Work requires my attention, so does Marghareta. And I certainly enjoy giving Marghareta my attention."

It was disconcerting to Luke that Michel paid so little attention to a story that loomed so large in Luke's imagination at the moment. Of course, Michel knew nothing of their secret; he had just been inventing a whimsical version of the Joan of Arc story. His tale had awakened misgivings that Luke had perhaps already had subconsciously, bringing them to the surface.

Ryan Hunter had made some unsettling remarks, if one divorced them from vicious actions such as vandalizing places of worship. Joan had repeated Hunter's remarks to Luke after encountering the man in Neptune, California:

_Lots of religions teach of an Adversary: a devil, as in Christianity, or a God of Evil, as in Zoroastrianism. Since God had not lived up to my expectations, I thought the Adversary might have been maligned._

"I have an idea for another chapter," said Luke.

"No, no, I've exposed myself to possible ridicule enough. It's your turn. Let me see your creation."

"I haven't written any fiction, though I enjoy reading it. I was busy writing up a theory in biochemistry last spring."

"Could I see that?"

"If you like. Come by out hotel after the tour. I think it's on my laptop."

When they arrived at the hotel Luke was rather relieved that the maid had tidied up the room. He was not good at household chores, while Grace considered it a matter of pride not to do anything housewifely. The bed, the scene of some rather passionate action earlier, looked good as new.

Luke found his write-up about 4-acid DNA and printed it out for Michel, who seemed amazed that the joke had gone this far. About to leave with the papers, he turned for a last remark. "About the story -- if you have a good idea, write it yourself. I will give you credit if it goes that far."

"_Grazie,_ Michel."

Luke sat at his laptop. It seemed silly to play with his computer when a brave new world was available for exploration outside the windows, but he felt that there were ideas that he must express, and could not express openly due to his friends' secret. When he had written and polished his story, it looked like this:

_Oidli trudged along the streets of the German town. He had thought that he could outlive his former friends by going into suspended animation for a few decades, but it had not worked. The people around the Temporal Computer had also extended themselves: by bearing and raising children in their ideology, and by recruiting a few locals fascinated by their technology. What was worse, these new opponents had never been friends with Oidli, and thought of him only as a traitor and enemy. Oidli badly needed an ally, but where in the early Renaissance could he find one?_

_He had heard of a local alchemist with a reputation for cleverness. Alchemy had a bad image in Oidli's culture, but the best of the alchemists were intelligent and observent men, the fore-runners of modern chemists._

_Oidli was about to approach his house when it blew up._

_Flames shut up, somehow more violent than Oidli expected from a regular house fire. Other villagers noticed it too; Oidli could hear them as they gathered at a safe distance._

_"What has happened?"_

_"The sorcerer has brought the flames of hell into our village!"_

_"Maybe he will fall in and take the flames back with him."_

_"No! There he is!"_

_The crowd seized the man and debated whether to tear him to pieces or throw him into his own fire. Oidli had a third opinion. Using his finger to focus his weaponry, he knocked out the two men holding the alchemist most firmly. The crowd naturally thought it was witchcraft, but blamed the alchemist rather than Oidli. He rushed forward and seized the scientist while the crowd was still fearful.._

_Midieval towns had no artificial lighting, and it was a moonless night. Once they got away from the fire, darkness made them nearly invisible, particularly as they kept quiet. Some pursuers even ran straight past, convinced that some distant light or movement represented their quarry. Oidli led the freed man to his own inn. The landlady, who might have gossiped about his guest, was gone, probably looking at the fire herself and making up a huge tale about it._

_"You have saved my life," said the alchemist. "How can I repay you?"_

_"Tell me what you have been researching."_

_The alchemist frowned; keeping discoveries secret was part of the alchemical philosophy. But he kept his promise. "Very well. I was seeking the Philosopher Stone. But I made a grand discovery: the Stone is not a stone, or even Earth. It is an air."_

_The Philosopher's Stone, the key to eternal life, was nonsense, of course. But Oidli was intrigued by the reference to air. Air was one of the four elements, but it was usually ignored, even by the philosophers. It would be a century before scientists starting studying things such as air pressure and the role of friction in slowing down objects._

_"I found a way to capture the Air," said the alchemist. "It brought health to the animals to whom I exposed it, and I'm sure that some component of it, if isolated, would be the Elixir. But when I lit a fire, it went madly out of control."_

_"Ah!" Oidli said, realizing that everything made sense now. "Oxygen!"_

_"Oxygen?"_

_"As you say, a component of the air. It supports burning, and also is necessary to life, but it does not bring immortality."_

_The other, who had been speaking Latin fluently, switched to German to swear._

_"Do not feel shamed. Your discovery of oxygen in itself is a sign that you are a genius."_

_"You sound as if you have access to much knowledge."_

_"I do." Oidli's quest for an ally was working out, though not exactly as he had intended it. "And if you will swear to work with me, I will share it all."_

_"I now have no home, no instruments, and my fellow townsmen seek my life. I have little choice. Very well. I, Faust, do solemnly swear--"_

TBC


	14. A Night at the Opera

**JOAN OF ITALIA**

**Chapter 14 A NIGHT AT THE OPERA**

_(AUTHOR'S NOTE: I have no idea which operas were really performed in Rome last summer. I picked FIDELIO for story purposes, because I was familiar with it and thought it would impress both Grace and Adam best.)_

Learning to ride on a donkey was less of an ordeal than Grace feared. What she thought of as the Ridiculousness Factor wasn't a problem: she was surrounded by people who considered the donkey a legitimate means of transport in a low-tech society. The mechanics were easier: Grace no longer had to hoist herself up to get in a saddle. And the famed stubbornness could be interpreted as a proud refusal to be dominated by a mere human. That was something Grace could respect, in the abstract.

All the same, Grace was relieved when Madame brought yesterday's horse back and suggested a final, no-stress ride before returning to Rome.

"I know these tests seem overdone," Madame remarked, riding alongside Grace," but it comes with the job. In theory, you can quit any time, but as a matter of practice, it may be difficult to transport from a famine-ridden area back to Europe at short notice. So we need to make sure you fit."

"I understand."

"Do you have any strong attachments that might tempt you to go home during a posting?"

"I've got a boyfriend. But he's planning to sign up to, when he's old enough."

"Old enough?"

"He won't be 18 until November. His parents won't let him sign up until then."

"But we could get some testing out of the way now. Horse skills, for example. Can he ride?"

"Well, yes, but he doesn't like it much. It's a means to an end."

Madame laughed. "That IS the right attitude. See if he's willing to come down here next week."

"All right."

Eventually they turned the horses back into the table and piled into the car for the trip back to Rome. About half way back, Grace's cell phone rang.

"Hi, this is Joan. You busy?"

"No, we're in the car and on the way home." A hint that other people were present and they couldn't discuss things like the God secret.

"Michel and Margie had an interesting idea about tomorrow night. There's an opera--"

"I'm not into opera."

"Neither am I, but we came to Europe to do new things."

"I'm not going to wear a dress," Grace declared, a statement that made Madame chuckle. "I didn't even PACK a dress."

"It's OK; jeans are acceptable. We're young people who don't know any better."

"Good. What's the opera, anyway?"

"Fidelio, they said. By Beethoven."

-----------

The six young people showed up at the opera house Saturday evening. Joan and Luke were paying for all the tickets out of Aunt Olive's legacy, and Grace wondered if Michel and Marghareta had suggested the outing simply so that they could get in for free. But she soon got interested in Marghareta's explanation.

"Opera is very important to our culture. When you _Americani_ rebelled against _Inghilterra_ you had a D_eclarazione; _we in Italy had revolutionary operas, and the maestro who wrote them, Guiseppe Verdi, is one of our greatest heroes."

"But this one isn't by Verdi," observed Joan.

"No, by Beethoven, but he also wrote about freedom."

Michel, more practical, was looking at the program. "Originally in German, it says, but translated into Italian so the audience can understand it."

"Except us," Luke pointed out.

"I know the general story," Marghareta said. "A man named Florestan has been unjustly locked in a prison for criticizing the governor, but his wife Leonora has decided to rescue him, disguised as a man, Fidelio. _Ma silenzio_! It is starting."

Grace thought the opening scene was pretty silly. Even not knowing much Italian, she could tell that a girl named Marcellina was in love with Leonora. It wasn't a lesbian thing; she thought Leonora was a guy, because she was wearing pants. In an era when even the most feminine women wore trousers a lot of the time, that was hard to swallow. But there was a catchy-sounding song delivered by, of all people, the jailer.

The scene changed to the prison itself, which looked like a concentration camp. There was a man ordering others around and singing evil sounding music. Obviously the governor, the heavy. Then he exited and the soprano in pants came in and sang a piece, presumably telling the audience who she really was and what she was up to -- in Italian, of course. Then, just as Grace was about to fall asleep, the soprano apparently talked the jailer into letting some prisoners into the yard, and suddenly Grace woke up.

This part was FANTASTIC. The tentative music told you exactly what they were thinking: were they brought out to witness an execution? To be killed themselves? And when they realized that they really had a few minutes of respite, they burst into a chorus of joy and longing. Even to a girl unfamiliar with classical music, it was overwhelming.

The heavy came in and got mad at the sight of the prisoners being happy. Interestingly, the jailer seemed to put up some defiance, but finally had to herd the prisoners back to their cells. Everybody cleared the stage except the heroine, who stared at the prison as the orchestra played despairing music. Grace could tell exactly what she was thinking: can I possibly beat the system? I've got to try. It was a feeling with which Grace was very familiar. Then Grace realized with a shock that she was looking at an actress, reading the mind of a girl who didn't exist. Beethoven's illusion was complete. And then the curtain came down on the first act.

Naturally the two Italian friends wanted their first impressions.

"Awesome!" said Joan. "This makes my school musical look like Itsy Bitsy Spider." A sentiment that probably did not translate easily to the Italian.

"I've never thought to analyze music that much," said Luke. "I know that it comes down to mathematics: pitch, duration, loudness. But that doesn't explain the emotional effect."

Grace had trouble putting her delight into words. She realized that she had a rather large vocabulary for abuse but not much of one for praise.

As for Adam, he simply sat and stared at the stage in a trance. He had discovered a new art form.

------

It wasn't until that night in bed that Grace remembered to tell Luke about Madame's suggestion. To her surprise, Luke was resistant.

"You'll be staying here, but I've only got one week left of this trip. And I'm supposed to use up two days of it dealing with some smelly animals out in NowheresVilla? I'm not thrilled about horses as you are, Grace."

"It's not about going horseback riding! It's about passing one of SEEDS' tests, so that when you reach your 18th birthday you can join me in the Third World that much quicker. That's the big plan, isn't it, Luke?"

Silence. It was too dark in the bedroom to see her lover, even though he was lying at her side. Grace had thought it romantic to speak her piece and hear her lover's disembodied voice answer, but now she realized that she could not see the boy's expression or what it meant.

"Luke?"

TBC


	15. Discord

**JOAN OF ITALIA**

**Chapter 15 Discord**

Adam's mood of artistic euphoria persisted after they got back to their hotel room. It was strange how he had never considered music as something to explore before. Even when working on the school music, Adam had concentrated on the stage design and left the music to others. Now he not only felt the desire to create music, but actually had tunes going in and out of his head -- with no way to write them down.

"Jane, do you read music?"

"Yeah. I had piano lessons just before I came down with Lyme Disease."

"I've made up a tune in my head. Can you write it down?"

"Not without picking it out on the piano. I'm not advanced enough to write down notes just hearing them. There's a piano down in the lobby; maybe we can use it tomorrow."

So Adam would just have to wait. He lay down in bed, hoping to keep the tune in his head. But it start to vary even as he concentrated on it. That was normal for music composition, wasn't it? Themes and variations.

Joan had clearly given up on any idea of conjugal relations that night, and went straight to sleep.

KNOCKNOCKNOCK.

At first Adam thought it was percussion in the piece he was improvising, then he realized that it was actually happening. His wife was rousing herself, but Adam was already awake, so he got out of bed and put on a bathrobe to answer the door.

It was Grace, dressed in another bathrobe and wearing an expression which was sulkier than usual, which was really saying something.

He let her in immediately; he couldn't keep her standing half-naked in a hotel hallway. "What--?"

"Luke and I had a fight," Grace said miserably.

"And he threw you out?" Joan asked, shocked, from the bed.

"No, I marched out. I-- that's probably him," she said as Adam's cell rang.

"Hello?" asked Adam into the phone.

"I'm sorry if I'm waking you up," said Luke's voice, "but is Grace there?"

"Yeah. Do you want to talk to her?"

"Not particularly," said Luke sulkily. "I just wanted to make sure she was safe." CLICK.

Adam looked awkwardly at Grace. "Luke, um, wanted to make sure you were all right."

"And that's all?" asked Grace.

"Um, yeah," he admitted reluctantly.

"I suppose I'd better crash here for the night, then. If you two don't mind me."

"You can share the bed with Jane." Adam said. "I'll sleep on the sofa."

"No, I'm the intruder here. I'll take the sofa."

If it had been another girl -- though Adam didn't know any other girls that well --- Adam would have insisted on gallantry. But gallantry was not a good approach with Grace, and so he eventually got back in bed with his wife.

The tune was still in his head, but now it was filled with discords.

-----

Perhaps because of the time spent meditating on music last night, Adam woke up a bit late that Sunday morning. He looked around. Joan's side of the bed was empty, and Grace was no longer on the sofa. Presumably she had gone back to Luke. Adam could hear splashing in the bathroom: his wife was taking a bath. She wouldn't mind his going in to shave; Joan had lost her shyness during the honeymoon, at least where Adam was concerned. So he went in.

It was Grace in the tub.

She gave a yelp. Adam said something like "Yikes!" and bolted out into the bedroom, where he donned his bathrobe.

Grace's voice called out. "It's all right, Rove. We've known each other for years, and I know you're not a rapist. Stand by the door and we'll talk."

"OK." He stationed himself by the bathroom door. "Um, what do you want to talk about?"

"How many women have you seen naked?" Grace called out.

Adam winced. But it was typical of him that he answered a question once asked. "Um, three. Bonnie, Joan, and Elizabeth Groetzmann."

"Elizabeth?"

"She posed nude for my mythological painting before Jane made up her mind. I don't know if she really counts. She covered up her, um, really private stuff while she was posing, but then we got in an argument and she stomped out and I could see her b---- Grace, why are we talking about this?"

"How do I compare?"

"Compare?"

"Maybe I should try to be more sexy. Desirable to Luke."

"No, no, Grace. Sexy is not you."

"Thanks a lot."

"I mean, other things are more important to Luke. Soul, personality--"

The main door of the room opened, and Adam's wife marched in with her brother, looking annoyed. "All right, I've collared Luke, and he -- what the hell is going on here?" she interrupted herself, looking inside the bathroom.

"Adam and I were having a conversation," said Grace's voice.

"In the nude?"

"It sort of happened that way," muttered Adam.

Joan drew a deep breath. "OK. I trust you, and I trust YOU, and so I'll let it slide."

"Yeah, um, likewise," said Luke, looking confused.

"Tell them what you told me," Joan ordered her brother.

"OK. Grace, I had plans for the coming week, but since it means so much to you, I'll change them and go down for the riding test. Sorry I hesitated."

Adam, who always thought in artistic terms, had an eerie sense of what's-wrong-with-this-picture. Luke's apology seemed too calculated, exactly the thing to mollify Grace. No mention of God, no promise to actually join her in the Third World.

But she was mollified. Grace emerged from the bathroom, smiling and wrapped in a towel. "OK. Time to stop washing dirty linen in front of our friends. Let's go back to our flat." She started for the main door.

"Um, Grace," said Joan, "shouldn't you get dressed before going out?"

"Not for what I have in mind," said Grace, and with that she and Luke went out the door.

TBC


	16. Seek and You Shall Find

**JOAN OF ITALIA**

**Chapter 16 Seek and You Shall Find**

"La, la, la, la."

_Plink, plink, plink, plink._

"No, that's not it," said Joan, staring at the piano keys. The landlady had let them use the instrument in her eatery, now that breakfast was finished and they were unlikely to drive customers away.

_Plonk, plonk, plonk, plonk._

"That's it. C, E, A, F. Half note, two quarters, whole note." Joan scribbled the notes on the crude staff she had drawn.

"You're being a big help, Jane, but you can stop. Now I don't have to worry about forgetting the piece. And I can spend the day learning musical notation from the Internet."

"We're in Europe, Adam! You can get on the Internet from anywhere, without losing valuable vacation time."

"But this is what I most want to do at the moment, Jane."

Joan knew better than to argue with her husband in an artistic mood, and she was relieved when her cell phone rang. "Hello?"

"Marghareta here. I go back to my home town today, to pick up some posters for my college room. Thought, you might be interested. Nothing sensational, just typical Italian town."

"Thank you. And I'd love to meet your parents."

_"Genitori non più_ -- they are no longer alive."

"Oh, I'm sorry."

"Come to the main train station at 10:00." Marghareta had bounced back from the remark about her parents, but it had startled her into losing her English for a few seconds, and Joan sensed that there was still some underlying grief at their loss.

Over three years Joan had learned to sensitize herself to slips like that: you never knew when a trace remark would lead to a mission. But what could she do about deceased parents? Nothing, but be sympathetic. Not everything had divine significance.

-----

The train station was large and ornate. Joan's Arcadia had only a perfunctory platform and a ticket machine; Baltimore's was strictly utilitarian. The only comparable one that Joan had seen was Union Station in Washington, and that was a deliberate showplace. Italians' notions of doing things in style had not halted after the Renaissance.

She and Marghareta boarded the proper train. Joan noticed that it was organized into small compartments, as she had seen in HARRY POTTER, not long rows of seats. That was good, because Joan needed privacy. Fortunately nobody else came to share the compartment.

"Do you know that story that Michel has been showing Luke?" she asked.

"About the time travelers and _Giovanna d'Arco_? Si."

"I wish you'd talk Michel out of it."

"I thought he had put it aside. But why?"

Joan could scarcely explain the real reason: that Luke saw parallels in the fate of Joan of Arc and their own dealings with God. "Well, it relates to something in our lives. Something private. Please take my word for it."

"Very well. Though Michel may cooperate more if he knows the reason."

The train stopped in Marghareta's hometown. It looked about the size of Arcadia, but it was hard to judge because the appearance was so different. The train station was more elaborate; it was clearly the main link to the outside world and was designed to make a good first impression. There was even a good restaurant in one wing, and the two girls took advantage to enjoy an early lunch. Emerging, she saw a church a few blocks away. It was nothing on the scale of St. Peter's or the Dome in FLorence, but it still towered over the rest of the town.

"I'd like to go in the church," Joan asked.

"I live in that direction. We can walk there."

They started. There were zebra-stripes and sidewalks everywhere. The buildings she passed stretched over entire blocks, but had multiple doors for various dwellings or shops. This was a town built on the assumption that you may not have a car (or, in the era it was built, a horse and carriage) and would have to walk to your store or church or friend's house. Joan uncomfortably remembered one of God's few definite prophecies: that oil would some day run out and cars become obsolete technology. This town could handle that better than Arcadia could.

About one block from the church, Marghareta turned right, saying that she would meet Joan back at the railway at 14:00 (Joan had finally learned the "subtract 12" rule for telling time). As she walked off it occurred to Joan that she was alone for the first time in Italy. If she ran into somebody who did not know English, she could not even communicate. But she told herself that there was no reason to worry. Crime seemed low, knowledge of English seemed widespread; she was safer here than she had been in the Boston slum she had gotten lost in last December. Besides, God always knew where she was, though that wasn't quite reassuring.

As she reached the church she saw well-dressed older people emerging. Of course, Sunday services must have just ended. Conscious of her blue jeans, Joan hung back until the worshippers had thinned out, then went through the door.

It was pretty. The same artistic drive that made it important for Michelangelo to paint a chapel's ceiling had been at work here, though of course the artists were less impressive and probably local. Joan tuned it out and looked for the confessionals. As she reached them, she saw an elderly priest emerge. He saw Joan and spoke in rapid Italian.

_"Lei parla inglese, padre?" _asked Joan, having looked up the phrase ahead of time. _Lei_ implied respect for the person addressed.

"Yes."

"I'm not really here to confess, but I have a problem."

He gestured at the confessional. Joan got into the penitent's side and knelt.

For a moment she was tempted to bring in the whole talking-with-God business. The priest could not betray her confidence, as Dr. Dan had, and she wouldn't have to deal with him in the future, as she would if she confessed to Father Mallory at home. But most likely the priest would regard her as either a prankster or a lunatic, and either way wouldn't take the rest of her confession seriously. She decided to focus on the main problem.

"My brother's been doing religious work for a year, but just recently he's been bothered by the question of why God lets his loyal worshippers suffer."

"Doing good should not be a quid pro quo."

"I know. But sometimes it seems like God is actually punishing his followers."

"God's will may be beyond human understanding."

"The trouble is, my brother's real smart. He WANTS to understand things."

"There is virtue in reason, but also limitations. St. Thomas Aquinas said revelation transcends reason but in no way contradicts it."

Yeah, she could just imagine a midieval theologian having a lot of weight with Luke. This was getting nowhere, so she might as well end it politely. "Thank you, father. I'll think about it."

He recited a blessing, and Joan got out of the confessional. Now what?

Suddenly she saw HIM. One of Him at least. It was Undertaker God, the form the divinity had took the day he tried to give her "The Big Picture" and overwhelmed her brain. Now he was dressed in the robes of a church worker (she didn't know the terminology) and heading toward a side door. Maybe God had an answer for winning back Luke.

Being in a church she had inhibitions against running, but she walked as fast as she could after the avatar. In the end she passed through the door and found herself in the churchyard, and no sign of God.

This was an old-fashioned church where the churchyard was used as a cemetery, "consecrated ground" for the deceased devout. While looking around for the deity, Joan's eyes fell on a tombstone.

**GIOVANNI CAVALLO**

**25-3-1920 a 6-10-1945**

**REQUIESCAT IN PACE**

Joan had cousins called the Cavallos. "Aunt" Jean Cavallo had been at the reading of Aunt Olive's will, and it was during a visit to the Cavallo farm a year ago that Grace first got interested in horses. But more importantly, Joan remembered hearing that their shared ancestor, a great-grandfather, was named Cavallo. Joan's maternal grandmother had of course lost the name when she married.

And it probably wasn't an accident that God had led her near this particular tombstone.

The search for roots was back on.

_(AUTHOR'S NOTE: The idea of walking into a churchyard and finding a tombstone with important information was inspired by HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS)_

TBC


	17. Composition in Four Parts

**JOAN OF ITALIA**

**Chapter 17 Composition in Four Parts**

_(Author's note: to my knowledge the show never gave a family background for Helen other than identifying Olive as an aunt, so I felt free to invent a geneology here)_

_  
_"The priest was nice, he looked up the parish records for me and translated them," said Joan. She was using the phone to speak to her mother that evening because Adam was still hogging the computer, though she didn't explain that to her Mom. "Turns out there's little chance of that particular Cavallo being related to us. His family has been in the town for generations. But it did prove that Cavallo can be an Italian name -- means 'horse'. Didn't you tell me your grandfather was Hispanic?"

"That's what he said," replied Helen. "He died before I was born and I never knew much about him, but I'll tell you what I know. He came to my great-grandparents' farm in 1930, saying that he was from South America and was looking for work. He was good at the jobs. My Grandmother Barbara fell in love with him and they eloped to Charlotte. My great-grandparents were furious at first, but Grandfather always insisted that it was a matter of love, not design, and eventually he won them over. He had great charm, everybody said.

"They had three kids," Mom went on. "There was my mother, Cassie. Joel, who is "Uncle" Jonathan's father. And finally Olive--"

"But are we sure that he was Hispanic rather than Italian?"

"He was very reticent in discussing his origins. Never specified a particular country. Didn't celebrate any old customs, except that he insisted on staying Catholic. Keep in mind that this was the rural South, no immigrant communities, and he didn't seek out any other Hispanics. There was a legend in my family that he had run away from some problem -- maybe political, maybe romantic -- and didn't want to be traced back."

"If he knocked up a girl somewhere, we may have extra cousins we don't know about," observed Joan.

Helen laughed. "Maybe, but they would probably be hard to trace. I'll call Jonathan Cavallo and see what he knows about Grandfather. It's his branch of the family that inherited the farm and he might have old papers. I'll get the information to you as soon as I can."

"Thanks. Just a week left--"

-----------

Adam was still studying musical notation. Luke, who wasn't too interested in music but had studied the theory, pointed him in the right direction.

"Don't think of grand symphonies, just look at the fundamental unit, a musical note," his brother-in-law had said. "It has three independent attributes: pitch, duration, and loudness, and each has own notation. Look at them one by one."

Loudness seemed the simplest. Adam discovered that the two fundamental symbols were "f", short for Italian _forte_ or loud, and "p", short for Italian _piano_ or soft. Doubling or tripling the "f" meant getting more loud, and doubling or tripling the "p" was defined similarly. An angle that widened going right meant to get louder; the Italians called it _crescendo_, and even English-speakers used the Italian term. Its opposite was _decrescendo_, with a narrowing angle. That should be easy to remember.

Now Adam was looking at duration. He was very curious to find out what a hemidemisemiquaver was---

_------_

By Monday afternoon, Luke was feeling tired and frustrated. He did not enjoy horseback riding, yet for hours he had sat with his legs splayed out awkwardly and his butt in a hard seat in which he did not feel balanced. And thinking of contrasts made it worse.

The first week of the Italian trip had been idyllic. He was with the three people he loved most in the world. He had acquired two new friends in Michel and Marghareta. Through them, he had learned to appreciate cultural differences instead of dismissing them as distractions in a uniform universe. Best of all, he could have fun with Grace any time they wanted, without worrying about parents crashing in to ruin the fun.

Then it had all unraveled. Joan was worried about his doubts of God's honesty: not because she thought he was wrong, but because she feared he might be right. Then Grace had forced him to choose between chatting with Michael over nerd business, vs devoting a day to her silly horse test. And what was worst was the way she had "rewarded" him yesterday morning: dramatically dropping the towel to reveal her nakedness, insisting on their getting in bed at an odd daylight hour, doing exactly the things she thought HE enjoyed most. It was turning lovemaking into a tool and not, well, love.

And now she was riding behind him with Madame, having rented an extra horse for the purpose. Making sure he was keeping his end of the "bargain".

He had insisted on bringing his laptop down, hoping to work more on Michel's story and his own additions to it. But it would have been utterly rude for him to work on it in the car, where his hosts kept trying to talk to him, and he would have looked silly punching keys on it while sitting on a horse.

Up ahead was the meter-high wall that Grace had told him about. She had prudently detoured around it herself, but Luke was anxious to get this over with. Jumping over it was, after all, a matter of physics. A certain about of energy required to lift the kilograms of horse and boy up a meter; enough horizontal momentum to carry them over. He would do it.

He reined in the horse about thirty meters away from the wall, examining the layout one more time, then prodded the horse into a gallop. At exactly the right moment the horse leapt in the air, sailed over the wall, and touched down on the other side, finally slowing down to a halt.

But Luke was no longer on its back.

----

"Luke!" screamed Grace.

For the past couple of hours she had ridden behind Luke, not pleased with the impression that he was creating. Oh, he was doing everything properly and winning high marks from the testers. But he clearly had an air of going-through-the-motions, and Grace thought that Madame must be aware of it. Did Luke have the commitment to spend months in a crisis-ridden environment? And yet that was nothing Grace could do about it. She had been allowed along only on the promise that she would not interfere with the tests, and besides, she did not want to sound like a nagging wife.

But when she saw Luke come off the saddle during the jump, all thoughts of the stupid test vanished and were replaced by far more serious concerns. Like any equestrian, she was haunted by the fate of Christopher Reeve, the Superman paralyzed and eventually killed by a riding accident.

She rode her own horse up to the wall, dismounted, and scrambled over on hands and knees. Luke was lying on the ground, thrashing and grabbing at his leg. Not paralyzed, thank G-d.

Behind her she heard a clatter of hooves as Madame leapt her horse over the wall and landed a safe distance away. Grace didn't care, except that it proved help was near.

"Luke, are you OK?"

Luke was not the stiff-upper-lip type. "My leg--"

Grace tried to examine it, but lacked the knowledge of how to evaluate it. In a sudden fit of déjà vu she remembered the pregnant Bonnie, similarly injured when a horse went out of control. Six months ago, though it seemed like forever.

"_Laissez-moi_," said Madame, running up. "I have training---"

Grace got out of the way and let Madame look. The woman took a cell phone from her jeans pocket and spoke in Italian. Then--

"It seems to be a broken leg and nothing worse. But we will call a hospital in Napoli to send an ambulance just in case."

"I want to stay with him," Grace insisted.

"If it pleases you." The woman looked around. "I will gather the horses and return them where they belong."

One woman trying to herd three horses across an uneven landscape? Grace didn't envy that role, and her respect for Madame's skills went up.

Finally an ambulance came, and paramedics came up the hill. They were not too happy -- it was a long walk with medical supplies in hand, and at its end one of them nearly stepped in a pile of equine droppings, in definite violation of sanitary regulations. One said "_Americani_!" in an exasperated tone, obviously thinking that they were dealing with stupid tourists who got a thrill out of playing Wild West with their horses. But they were dutiful, and managed to get Luke downhill and into the ambulance. Grace, feeling rather useless, asked permission to ride in back with Luke, and since there was no need to operate on him or monitor vital signs, they let her. Probably they thought she was Luke's wife, and she made no attempt to correct them. Luke himself had calmed down, his only request being that Maestro retrieve his laptop from his car and put it in Grace's keeping.

There was something that Grace had to straighten out as soon as possible. Mindful that the ambulance crew might know some English, she bent down and whispered: "Luke?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you think this is -- punishment?"

"Punishment?"

"You-know-who, breaking your leg for criticizing Him?"

"No, no, I know what happened. My horse stepped on some uneven ground just before jumping, and that threw my balance off. Silly me, treating this as a physics problem with uniform surfaces and perfect geometry."

It was a vast relief to Grace. If Luke had said YES, she might have been tempted to go along with his line of skepticism, that He was just using them and was prepared to throw them aside when they were no longer of use. But Luke's honesty saved the day. They were dealing with a mere human-scale accident, and the metaphysical mystery was still in the background. They would have to deal with it later.

TBC


	18. Temptation

**JOAN OF ITALIA**

**Chapter 18 TEMPTATION**

Aside from the broken leg itself, it didn't go badly. The emergency clinic was slow but it got the job done, without any nonsense about asking for insurance coverage. Grace stayed with him throughout, and that simple loyalty meant more to him than her behavior of two days ago. Grace agreed that doing a strip-tease was not her style ("besides, my ass is not my best side").

Now, Tuesday night, he was back in his own bed -- or at least in his hotel bed in Rome, which felt like home now. He was pretty much immobilized, except for trips to the bathroom on crutches, but that had its advantages, because he could lie down and THINK, something Luke did very well.

Maestro had assured him that though the current test had been a fiasco, Luke could try again later, maybe in America. Going to the Third World with Grace was still an option. Meanwhile Luke had reasoned that, even taking God out of the equation, there were still solid reasons for going to the Third World: working beside his beloved, and the knowledge that he was working for a worthy cause. He shouldn't have balked on Saturday night.

Luke also had an opportunity to add on to the story. Literally using his computer as a laptop, he typed:

_Communications were poor in this era, and Oidli and Faust soon reached a town where the exploding-house incident was unknown. On the next Saturday, Market Day, they went to the marketplace to stock up on supplies. To a local the marketplace was the epitome of participating in society, and it was bustling and lively. Oidli saw its negative sides. Hygiene was poor and everybody not only stank, but were full of bacteria and viruses of which they knew nothing. Oidli was terrified that close contact in the market place would infect him with something for which he had not been immunized. After all, the immunizations were decades old and pathogens could mutate._

T_here were other worries. At one end of the market, in front of the town hall, two unfortunate men and one woman were sitting in the stocks. Next to the stocks was an iron post that gave Oidli the willies; it reminded him of Joan's execution, and he was only slightly mollified on learning that people were tied to the post to be whipped, not burnt._

_Oidli was willing to get out as quickly as possible, and he looked for his companion._

_Faust was talking to a girl. As Oidli approached, she slapped the alchemist and stalked off. Faust looked annoyed, but brightened as Oidli walked up._

_"Ah, master. Could you teach me the charm that you used on the French peasant girl?"_

_"Why? To win that woman to your lust?"_

_"Aye," Faust replied disconcertingly. Oidli was used to elaborate courtship rituals between equals, and had hoped by using the blunt word "lust" to shame Faust out of his plan. But Faust didn't think that way._

_"I used the 'spell' on Joan in service to a good cause, and even so I regret that I did it," said Oidli. "I refuse to use it for private greed. Do you even know the girl's name?"_

_"G-- um--- Gretchen."_

Luke hesitated, wondering if he was getting in over his head in the subject matter. He had experienced lust for Grace's body, but it was always subordinate to love and respect for her finer qualities.

KNOCKNOCKNOCK

_"Chi e la?" _Luke called out.

"Michel."

_"Venite"," _he called, saving his program and putting his laptop aside

Michel came in. "I heard about your accident, but I was delayed at work."

"It's all right. My sister and friends have been helping me all day."

"Where are they now?" Michel said, looking about the empty apartment.

"I told them to go enjoy themselves for the evening. I could ring up the landlady if something came up. They decided to tour the catacoombs. Very spooky at night."

"So I hear."

Luke pointed at the laptop on the night table. "I've been working on your story--"

"Ah, never mind that." Michel took pages of print out of his jacket pocket. "I've been reading your paper on new strains of DNA_. E magnifico_! You even explain why the quadruple acids are not found in nature."

"Yeah, they're unstable and would degenerate into the normal triple form too easily. But a biochemist at Harvard thinks they could block the decay, and the quadruple acids might be useful."

"They already find your work worth expanding. Luke, you have a grand career ahead of you as a scientist."

"Thanks, but I may not --"

"Che?"

"I may be going to the Third World with Grace." He started to explain about SEEDS.

"No, no, Luke. I mean it is a noble cause, but it would be a waste of your talents."

"If I save lives out there?"

"Perhaps your invention could save lives! New medicines, new ways of growing food -- it may even save more lives." Michel was more emotional and earnest than Luke had ever seen him before. "Going to the Third World -- is that more about the cause, or about the girl?"

"I hadn't sorted it out."

"Perhaps I could talk to your _belladonna_, persuade her to stay with you in Europe or America --"

"No! No! Grace has her heart set on the Third World project. Besides, she may slug you."

_"Hmmph. Vostra Gracia, non e piena di grazia."_

Luke could understand the pun with the Ave Maria:_ Your Grace is none too gracious_. "I know. But I love her that way."

TBC


	19. Witch Hunt

**JOAN OF ITALIA**

**Chapter 19 WITCH HUNT**

Helen finally came through on Wednesday, three days from the end of their trip. Because of the five-hour time difference, the phone call reached Joan in early evening. At Luke's urging they had minimized the story of Luke's accident, not wanting her to worry she had a second crippled son, and so little of the phone call focused on his leg.

"I finally got some information out of old Wyrdafeller," she said. "He pretended that he wanted to add the Caravaggio to his collection and sent out feelers. Turns out that the painting belongs to a reclusive collector in Atlanta. I've got his name and address, but I have no idea how your friend can talk him into giving her information."

"Still, we've kept our promise to Marghareta. Thanks, Mom."

"I also heard from Jean Cavallo. She looked through her attic for old documents Grandfather might have left behind, concerning his life before coming to the Carolinas. Almost nothing. But she did find a letter from his priest, shortly before Grandfather's death, asking if he wanted the priest to notify 'your kin in Petracchia'. Grandfather must have mentioned his home town during confession, and the priest thought the letter was private enough to discuss it."

"Petraccia. How do you spell it?" Joan wrote down the letters. "OK, we'll try that."

"Please tell us what you find. Jean is as curious as I am. Oh, and she says that the pony Olive bequeathed her family is very cute. So it looks like nearly everybody is happy with her gifts."

"Happy, right," said Joan guardedly, and hung up soon after.

She told her friends about the new lead. The guys weren't too interested; Luke was trying to help Adam out by programming some music functions into his laptop. But Marghareta was thrilled to learn of her painting's location, and she agreed to act as interpreter again. Petraccia itself, she commented, was easily translated; it just meant Big Rock.

The two girls were about to set out the next day in Joan's rented car, when a third girl ran up.

"Grace!" exclaimed Joan. "Aren't you supposed to be at work?"

"Yeah, but they gave me the day off. I pointed out that my friends were going back to the States in a couple of days and this may be the last chance to be with you for a while."

"It's too bad, then, that we are separated into groups." Marghareta observed delicately.

"I'll take care of the guys later.

After they had been on the road about twenty minutes -- Petraccia was southeast of Rome, and Marghareta directed Joan to the right autostrada -- the real reason for Grace's presence came up. "Look, I know it's not your fault, Marghareta, and so I'll only say it once. Tell your boyfriend to butt out."

"Butt out? I know that "butt" is American slang for _I glutei_, but I don't know of its meaning as a verb, and some of the possibilities are quite unpleasant--

"It means to mind his own business. He came to me yesterday. Said he normally believed in equality of the sexes and all that, but in my case I was sleeping with a great man. Said I should be a submissive little wife and sacrifice my career to his. I nearly slugged him."

Marghareta looked flustered. "I wasn't involved in that. I'll give him the message."

Fortunately Grace, having sounded off, dropped the subject, allowing them to discuss more pleasant matters. Joan, following the directions Marghareta was giving from the map, got off the autostrada onto a local street, then a country road. Petrachia was definitely off the beaten path.

Eventually they pulled into a little village at the foot of a large, rocky hill. This was another part of the mountainous country through which Grace and Luke had ridden. Joan parked on the main street, or rather the only street. At least the smallness was encouraging: the object of the hunt wasn't going to get lost in a crowd. "What do you think?"

Marghareta pointed "Try the ristorante. It's time to eat anyway."

Her instincts were correct. This wasn't like an American restaurant where people ate at separate tables and ignored each other. It was more like a British pub, except that the culture encouraged far more conviviality than the British one. Not only were the denizens willing to talk, but the men were blatantly interested in the three pretty girls. Joan was careful to show off her wedding ring, and Grace adopted where she called the Male-Repellent Glare, which worked better.

Marghareta addressed the group in Italian. They discussed her question among themselves, then a woman replied. Marghareta thanked her and turned to her friends. "She says she has heard old stories about the Cavallos. She has an old father at home, who might be able to tell us more."

"Will he be willing to talk to us?"

"Si, particularly if we reward him. Do not insult him by offering money directly, but I will hint at a later gift."

"OK."

-----

The old man, Paolo, was voluble. Joan could tell, even in her ignorance of Italian, that he was giving Marghareta a lot of irrelevant village history along with information. TO keep from getting bored, Joan unobtrusively looked around the house. Clearly more than a hundred years old, and without some of the modern conveniences she was familiar with, such as a computer and all it implied about Being Connected. But what she saw was designed to look charming, if not luxurious.

Marghareta finally got a chance to translate to Joan. "He says, yes, the Cavallos are an old family here. But they live on the mountain, and they've never participated much in village life. The old story was that they were witches."

_"Witches?" _Joan replied incredulously.

Marghareta looked embarrassed. "Keep in mind that a hundred years ago this village was nearly cut off from civilization. Few cars, no phones, certainly no TV or internet. Midieval attitudes could still survive. The family was probably just eccentric."

Paolo spoke up again, in a long speech.

"Paolo says that was a big blow-up in the 1920's. Mama Cavallo predicted the coming of an evil man who would lead the country to ruin. Later the villagers realized that she meant Mussolini, but at the time they were just annoyed at the doom-saying. The Cavallo's son apparently got sick of the situation and decided to leave. He never came back."

"That fits," mused Grace. "He bummed around for a few years and finally reached the Carolinas around 1930. So it looks like these are your ancestors, Joan."

"He left behind his parents and a younger sister, Maria. The parents eventually died, but Maria is still alive."

"After 80 years?!" Joan exclaimed.

_"È molto vecchia_," said Paolo, rather unnecessarily.

Light suddenly dawned on Joan. "So _that's_ what He wanted me to do! It wasn't just a matter of looking for my roots. He wants me to find the old lady. My -- let me see -- great-great aunt."

"He?" repeated Marghareta in confusion. "Who is He? Somebody knew this already?"

Grace saved Joan from an awkward answer by asking "How do we get to her house?"

That turned out to be complicated.

-----

"He never does make things easy for us, does He?" Joan complained. She was perched behind Grace on a huge horse. She had never ridden such an animal since childhood pony rides, and she would have been uncertain of her balance under the best of conditions. Under these conditions, trudging uphill, she was worried about sliding back over the tail. She was holding onto to Grace with an intensity that would have embarrassed the girls on any other occasion: hands tightly around Grace's waist, her breasts pressing against Grace's back.

It seemed that there was only one path up the hill to the Cavallo house. It was too narrow for cars, and long for a human walker. It made the house very hard to get to, and that probably suited the reclusive Cavallos just fine. Once a week, the girls learned, a trusted neighborhood farmer loaded food and other supplies on a donkey and made the trek up and down the hill. He was very protective of his customer, and it took time to convince him that the American girls had a genuine and benign motive to visit the recluse. He then rented them a big, sure-footed steed capable of carrying two of them. Marghareta, of course, had to stay downhill.

Grace was an expert equestrienne, having been trained by God Herself, but she found it difficult to maneuver uphill with what she uncharitably called "dead weight" behind her. "Seems quests always end with the most difficult step. Frodo in Mordor, Odysseus having to fight the suitors. Just promise me one thing. If you start falling off the horse, don't pull me with you. Luke did that once, and the ground was a lot softer then."

"With my luck I'll land on the sharpest rock in the vicinity, or a pile of donkey crap," Joan grumbled.

"Well, make sure I land on top of you, then."

Finally the path leveled off and they found themselves staring at the Cavallo house. It had literally gone to seed: overgrown grass in the yard, paint peeling. Why look pretty when nobody but the trusty delivery-farmer ever came?

Joan scrambled down from the horse, and while Grace looked for a place to tie the animal, she went to the front door and knocked. "_Allo_?" she called, deliberately giving the word the Italian pronunciation so as to sound less threatening. Communication was going to be difficult. Their Italian was meager and the old woman was unlikely to have learned English.

No answer. Joan tried the knob and found it unlocked. Reasoning that she need not feel like an intruder while on a Divine mission, Joan ventured in, with Grace behind her.

Sprawled across the floor, unconscious or worse, was her aunt Maria Cavallo.

TBC


	20. At the Appointed End

**JOAN OF ITALIA**

**Chapter 20 At the Appointed End**

Grace kept her head, as she had when Judith Montgomery has passed out two years ago. She called Marghareta on her cell phone and asked her to call the Italian equivalent of 911, specifying that an ambulance couldn't reach the place and a helicopter might be necessary. As the copter approached, Grace hopped on the horse and rode a prudent distance away, out of the line of sight. It had occurred to her that the authorities might be suspicious of a girl who kept showing up at accident scenes.

Soothing the horse to keep it quiet, Grace watched as the medics loaded the unconscious Maria Cavallo into the copter, then helped Joan in. Joan was looking like she'd rather be on the horse than up in the air, but she got in. As they flew off, Grace called the guys in Rome. Although Adam and Luke hadn't been interested in a roots search, the discovery of an actual relative was of course a different matter. They agreed to rent a second car and drive down to the local hospital as quickly as possible.

Now all Grace had to worry about was getting the horse down the hill.

----

It was a very crowded waiting room, with Joan, Adam, Grace, Luke, Marghareta, Michel, and even the farmer who had rented the horse to Grace. He said, with Marghareta translating, that his next delivery was scheduled three days from now and he would have been too late to save Maria's life. It was a miracle that the American girls had arrived in time, he said.

And of course it was, though he did not know the details. G-d had sent Joan to Europe, then asked her to look for roots, and that request had led Joan to her aunt's door. Had G-d even figured in the delays, so that Joan arrived exactly when help was most needed?

The authorities did not believe in miracles; they clearly thought it suspicious that Joan had shown up at exactly the right moment. But the doctors assured them that Signorina Cavallo's problem was purely natural, a heart attack suffered by a woman nearly a century old.

The nurse came out of the old woman's room. "She wants to talk to the women. But don't exhaust her; she's very weak.

Joan, Grace, and Marghareta got up and walked slowly in.

The old woman was in a bed, hooked up to a lot of machinery. Grace tried to see a resemblance to Joan, Luke, or the Cavallo cousins, but she was too old and wrinkled. Aside from Olive, Helen Girardi's family was rather short-lived.

She looked up. "So you have come."

"You speak English?" asked Joan in relief.

"I was told, at the end, the gift of tongues."

"It's not the end," insisted Joan, trying to put on a bedside manner.

"It is. I was told I would live to see my heiress, and two friends, and to bless the friends. Please walk up, girl," she gestured to Grace.

"Um, I don't mean to be rude," said Grace. "but I'm Jewish, and if this is a Christian ritual--"

"It is direct from the God we both worship," said the ancient.

Grace walked forward and knelt. The ancient tapped her forehead and, to Grace's astonishment, switched to Hebrew. "May Adonai grant you the answer to what you seek. Amen."

Marghareta, as a skeptic, had even less reason to cooperate, but apparently she had decided to humor a poor woman on her deathbed, and she knelt in Grace's place. The ancient switched to Latin, apparently repeating the same phrase.

"What about me?" asked Joan. "I mean, I don't mean to sound greedy--"

"You are already the most blessed of all, _mia figlia_." And with that, she closed her eyes and died.

-----

Grace was exhausted, physically and emotionally, when they got back to Rome. In the space of a single day she had had two strenuous rides on horseback, and had witnessed a death, albeit a serene one. By unspoken agreement she and Luke got in bed and fell asleep, making no attempt at foreplay -- even though, Grace realized with a qualm, they might have only two nights together left.

_The heat was oppressive, the African sun. Grace was sweating, but the climate was not the main source of her anguish. "But why? Why did it strike him down instead of me? We were both at the plague camp!"_

_"Simple Chance," said Madame. "Don't try to read metaphysics into it, Grace. Perhaps Luke touched an infected object that you did not. Or he may lack antibodies that you possess. Concentrate on being with him at the end." Bas as Grace turned toward Luke's tent, she heard Madame mutter "So promising a young man--"_

_Grace found Luke in bed, flushed and damp with sweat. Something brought on a déjà vu, a memory of the death of his great-aunt a few years ago in Italy. But she had lived nearly a century and had almost welcomed death, while Luke was being snatched in his youth._

_"I should never have brought you here!" cried Grace._

_"Brought -- myself -- here," Luke gasped out._

_"Because you loved me and wanted to be with me. I wish you had hated me instead; then you'd still be safe and healthy in the States."_

_"I -- love you --- Grace---"_

_"No! No!"_

"No! No!" Grace sat upright in bed. "Luke---"

"I'm right here, Grace," said Luke's voice. He grasped her tightly, and she felt her breasts press into his. "You must have a nightmare, Grace."

Grace, disoriented, tried to focus. They were still in Rome, the night after Maria Cavallo's discovery and death. Luke was perfectly fine for the moment. She tried to calm herself. "Luke, you can't go to the Third World. You'll die there."

"It was just a dream, Grace."

"It was NOT just a dream. It was prophecy. Your aunt gave me one chance at prophecy, a glimpse into the future." Grace was still gasping from the shock.

"So I'm destined to die soon?" Luke said worriedly.

"No! Because we have free will and can change the future. And I'm exerting mine. We've got to separate, Luke. Me to go with SEEDS, you to go to Harvard and work on your discovery. That way, you'll escape death."

"We can't part--"

"We can! What's the use of free will if you won't exert it? At least we have two days left together. Let's make the most of it."

"We wouldn't really be parting," said Luke as new ideas occurred to him. "This isn't the nineteenth century. We have phones, the Internet -- I'll even try to invent something that'll let us converse even better."

Grace noticed how quickly "would" changed into "will". Luke was committing himself to the Harvard idea. Relieved, she sank back on her pillows and pulled Luke down with her. "But it won't compensate for THIS. As I said, let's make the most of it---"

TBC


	21. A Miracle for Marghareta

**JOAN OF ITALIA**

**Chapter 21 A Miracle for Marghareta**

As the nearest relative and the discoverer of the body, Joan had to stay in Naples overnight to take care of legal matters. Her husband of course stayed with her, and Marghareta agreed to stick around in case Joan needed an interpreter. Joan hoped that she wasn't jeopardizing the Italian girl's job.

Unfortunately the only hotel they could find on short notice was one of the old-fashioned types that lacked private baths. Thus, the next morning, Joan donned a hotel-issue bathrobe over her underwear (she hadn't brought pajamas) and walked out to the shared bath.

She met Marghareta coming out, and the other was in a bad mood. "Are you here to pee, or to take a full bath?" she demanded.

"Uh, both," said Joan, "but I can postpone the latter if--"

"We need to talk."

"Right."

In the bathroom Joan did her business, then fished her cell phone out of the bathrobe pocket. The parents would of course have to know that they had found, and lost, a relative of Helen's all in a day, but she and Luke would have to get their stories straight. How account for the perfect timing? Was it safe to mention the blessings? But both Luke and Grace had their cell phones turned off, for some reason. Joan shrugged, and decided to proceed to Marghareta's room.

Marghareta was wearing jeans and a bra, and apparently didn't mind being seen in that sate, so anxious was she to get down to business. "I had a dream last night. I dreamt that was in an American city named Atlanta, in a private art gallery. Some millionaire was showing off a painting to me, the Caravaggio of Jezebel. I learnt a lot about the millionaire, I learned how to appeal to him if the situation came up again, and it will."

"Sounds like a very pleasant dream," Joan said evasively.

"But it was NOT a dream. It was far too clear and detailed. For example, all of the characters talked a funny form of English--"

"Southern accent, yeah."

"I didn't know about southern accents, so why should I dream them? This was a vision, Joan."

"If you say so."

"'If I say so?' You know a lot more than that, Joan."

Joan sighed. "Yeah, but you're not going to believe me."

"Try it."

"OK." Joan took a deep breath. "About three years ago, I started having encounters with strangers. They'd give tell me to do some weird task -- and I'd do it, and the result was always good ripples, either for me or somebody else. When I asked how they knew what would happen, they said they were God."

"God? _Il dio_?" repeated Marghareta, as if thinking she had misheard the English.

"Yeah."

_"è pazzo!"_

"Yeah," said Joan, guessing what it meant. "But it kept happening over and over, so what else could I think? And it's not just me. After about two years I learned that there was a guy named Ryan Hunter, who used to work for God but got sour about it. Shortly after that God had me confide in Luke and Grace, and started giving THEM instructions. She told Grace to learn to ride horseback, and you saw the result of that. And yesterday I learned that I had an aunt with some connection of her own. Maybe it runs in my family."

"You're jumping to conclusions," said Marghareta. "Somebody calls himself -- herself -- God, and you immediately think American God, Jesus-loves-me and all that. If it happened to me I would think of the God of Dante's Inferno or Verdi's _Dies Irae_, and I would try to hide. But I don't believe in that God at all. And I refuse to believe in a benevolent God, because he would not let my parents die."

"Yeah. Well, you've got company. My brother doesn't deny that it's God; he's seen enough unexplained events. But the bunny valence thing bothers him; he's convinced that God is going to double-cross us in the end, treat us as expendable. That's why the Joan of Arc story bugs him so much. But from my point of view, the experience has been too good to be bad, in spite of some setbacks. I've learned to respect knowledge, to forgive a wrong, and I won a circle of friends that I love."

"Still, it doesn't sound like the traditional God."

"OK. I knew I wouldn't convince you, so can we cut the conversation short? I still need a bath; I stink like a horse, and I'm not used to walking around my nightclothes."

"Very well. Go."

----

Joan and her friend were distracted later that morning by a practical matter: where to bury Aunt Maria. The village churchyard was one logical place, but as the Cavallos had not attended the church for decades, and not requested Last Rites, the priest wanted assurances that she had died "in the faith". That was an awkward question for Joan, who didn't want to be questioned about the woman's final speeches. The alternative would be to fly her to the States, probably to be buried beside her brother in North Carolina. That meant talking with some other people.

Luke's and Grace's cell phones were still off.

In late morning Joan finally called Arcadia, in spite of the time zone difference. Her Mom was bewildered to be awakened in early morning to learn that she had found and lost an aunt during a single night. Her Dad was, furthermore, puzzled about the timing. Joan had an answer ready, and it didn't even require much faking. "Yeah, the police here wanted to ask about it, too. But it was pure dumb luck, that we showed up while she was dying. Please don't you start--"

"Sorry, darling, I know you're under tremendous pressure. I'll call the Cavallos. Jonathan probably counts as next-of-kin and can make the decisions. Keep in touch."

"Thanks, Dad. We'll be seeing you guys by Sunday, if I don't get stuck here."

Eventually the local officials let them go, and Joan started driving Adam, Marghareta and herself back to Rome. At the start she once more tried calling Luke and Grace on the cell phone, with no better results. What the hell were those two doing?

Marghareta had sensibly remained silent, except for interpreting, during the tangle with officialdom. But in the privacy of the car she spoke up.

"I think I've made sense of what you've told me."

"Oh?"

"It looks like I have to accept a supernatural force, considering what my vision, but I do not think it is the traditional God. Plato wrote a theory about the universe. The world was invented by a "_demiurgo_", an imperfect spirit. Since it was imperfect, there were flaws in the creation -- disease, suffering, cruelty. But there was another spirit who wanted to help. It couldn't just wave a magic wand and fix everything, it didn't have the power. But it could enter the world and do some tinkering, often with the help of human allies. There are lots of names for the second spirit, one of them was _Logos_ -- Wisdom or Knowledge. I think you've been dealing with the Logos, trying to fix the flaws in the Demiurgo's work."

Adam spoke up unexpectedly. "It's weird, because from time to time I thought there was an outside force helping me with my art. I didn't think "God" until Jane told me, but I sometimes thought of it as an angel. Now it sounds like your Logos has been doing it."

"It is an interesting idea," said Joan, "but it means that he has been lying to me all along. He always said that he COULD fix things immediately, because he's all-powerful, but didn't want to interfere with free will."

"An all-powerful and benevolent deity would have saved my parents' lives," said Marghareta bitterly. "I refuse to believe that."

Joan thought of Kevin, of Judith, of the assault that blighted her mother's life for years. She had a lot to think about.

-----

When they got to the hotel, Joan marched to her brother's room before even getting her own. Her knock was answered by Grace, looking even odder than usual: dressed in a bathrobe at 1 PM, her hair in more than normal disarray, and looking rather exhausted.

"What the hell have you been doing?" demanded Joan. "I've been working my ass off, dealing with family matters, and where was Luke?"

"Um, Luke and I came to an understanding. I'm staying in Rome with SEEDS and eventually going to the Third World. Luke will go back to the States and accept Harvard. So we were saying goodbye."

"That took you all morning?"

Luke's voice cut in. "The way we were doing it, yeah."

Joan looked in. Luke was still in bed, without his glasses. He didn't seem to be wearing a shirt or pajama top, or maybe anything. The crutches he was using to accommodate his broken leg had fallen some distance from the bed.

"Oh!" exclaimed Joan, catching on and turning red. "Um, I'll leave you to your, um, saying goodbyes---" She shut the door herself.

"_Che meraviglia!"_ said Marghareta. "All morning? Wait 'til Michel hears about this. Go and do likewise---"

TBC


	22. End of the story?

**JOAN OF ITALIA**

**Chapter 22 End of the story?**

Something woke up Luke at about 3:00 Saturday morning.

Grace was still sound asleep beside him, and he was careful not to wake her. But he could not get back to sleep himself. Something needed doing, and Luke finally realized what it was. His story needed changing to match his new outlook. Of course as a practical matter it needn't be changed immediately. He could rewrite it on the plane and Email it to Michel once he got back on line. But he felt the need to change it now.

Retrieving his crutches and his robe from the floor, Luke managed to get to the desk with his laptop. He looked at the start of his last chapter.

_(Write a chapter explaining that Oidli and Faust have travelled to Paris and have been living there for a year. For now, jump to the good stuff.)  
_

_Oidli and Faust had been in Paris about a year when they encountered a merchant who had travelled through their previous town in Germany. Although they did not know him personally, they offered him drinks in exchange for news. Communication over a distance was difficult in this culture._

_He obliged with some gossip and some business remarks that didn't interest the philosophers. Then Faust asked with apparent casualness: "Do you know of a girl named Gretchen?"_

_"Why yes," said the merchant. "It's quite a scandal."_

_"Scandal?"_

_"It seems that she consorted with a travelling sorcerer, and three months ago she bore a child. The child died at one month, for no apparent reason, and it was thought that she used witchcraft to kill it, so that she would not have the stigma of raising a bastard."_

_Oidli glared at Faust, but held his tongue while the merchant was there._

_"She was put on a trial for murder and witchcraft, and condemned to be hanged," said the merchant conversationally. "Who knows, they may be carrying out the sentence now."_

_Oidli found some pretext for sending the merchant away, and turned to his companion angrily. "Did you seduce the girl, and get her with child?"_

_"Um, yes, I entered her bed, I did not know of a child."_

_"If you had told me your intentions, I could have given you a, a potion to make your contact barren. But that's done with. We must rescue her from death." Oidli was confident that the child had died of natural causes; the people of this era understood almost nothing of disease._

Luke's original idea, following the Goethe story, was that they would fail to save Gretchen and be saddled with still more guilt. But he no longer felt that cynical mood, and he tried to think of a more positive ending. He started typing again.

_The hanging was to take place on the day of their arrival, and to be carried out in the town square where everybody could watch the victim's sufferings. It was cruel, but it least it made the ceremony easy to disrupt. They wouldn't have to break in and out of a prison._

_Oidli and Faust hid themselves among the crowd. As the bailiffs forced the girl up unto the scaffold, Oidli used his finger to focus his weapon, and fired. The bailiffs fell unconscious, and so did the girl; Oidli could not aim his weapon finely enough to spare her._

_He had hoped to rescue her while the crowd was still amazed, but unfortunately somebody immediately shouted "WITCHCRAFT", and that riled up the crowd. They looked around, and somebody spotted Faust and Oidli._

_"There they are! The sorcerer and his Master!"_

_The crowd converged on them from all sides. Somebody grabbed Oidli's arms and he was no longer able to aim his weapon. If he could not fight his way free, he would have a horrible death, in one form or another. As for Faust--_

_Then a miracle happened. The people closest to the philosophers started falling to the ground. Those further away were panicked, and started fleeing. They might still hate the "witches", but they feared them, and decided that catching them was somebody else's problem. Within a minute the square was virtually empty._

_Oidli looked around. Behind him, on the edge of the square, were a man and boy on horseback, looking calm and even triumphant in the wake of the fight._

_The man glared at Faust. "You. Pick up the girl, get one of the bailiff's horses, and follow us." he commanded._

_"Oidli," said the other, "you may ride behind me." The voice was much softer, and in fact was not a boy's voice after all. This was a girl in disguise._

_The party of five on three horses rode through the town. Naturally they got attention, but the townspeople had apparently heard about the eruption of witchcraft in the town square, and nobody got in their way._

_They reached open road soon; towns of this era were not large. After riding about ten kilometers they stopped, and Oidli noticed a cruder path leading into thick woods. The rescuers reined in._

_"Faust, send your horse back now," said the man. "We are not thieves."_

_Faust handed the unconscious girl over to Oidli and dismounted. A slap on the rump sent the animal back toward the town; presumably memory or familiar scents would guide it the rest of the way. The rescuers then rode their horses down the path while Oidli and Faust followed with the girl._

_Fifty meters inside, they came to a clearing. Oidli was not surprised to find it filled with future technology._

_"You're time travelers," he guessed._

_"Not quite right," said the girl. "I was born in the here and now, but my parents are time travelers, and they brought me up in the secrets. My name is Matilda, by the way. Call me Mattie."_

_"I am Heinrich," said the man. "I have no blood relationship to the travelers at all, but they befriended me and told me what they were doing."_

_"Then neither of you may know that I left the travelers on hostile terms."_

_"We know the story," said Mattie, "and over the years, many of the travelers have decided that you were right. Having recruited the peasant girl Joan to serve our purposes, we should have felt obligated to protect her when the English caught her. We've reprogrammed the Temporal Computer never to come up with a plan that risks an innocent's life again. You are a hero to us, Oidli, and we would love to have you work with us again."_

_Faust looked flustered, apparently reflecting that he had done nothing heroic. "Thank you for saving my life," Faust told the newcomers._

_"It is not __gratis__," said the man coldly. "You owe us."_

_"What must I do?"_

_"You had your way with Gretchen a year ago. Once she wakes up, it is her turn to have her way. If she wishes never to see you again, you will leave her. If she wishes you for a husband, you will wed her. If she wishes to beat you, you shall not resist."_

_Faust was used to the notion of penance for wrongdoing; it was part of the Zeitgeist, even if he was not a conventional believer. "I understand. I will do what she says."_

_Meanwhile, Oidli contemplated "Matilda". Her blond hair was short and unkempt, and her matter was rough, but all the same she struck Oidli as the most beautiful girl in the world---_

Luke suddenly realized that in describing Matilda he was really expressing his fascination with Grace. Oh, well, let it stand---.

-----

Rome Airport. The end of the journey.

Joan was crying, and Adam, though trying to comfort his wife, seemed on the verge of doing so. Luke didn't know precisely what they were mourning -- the city, the culture, the friendship with Michel and Marghareta, maybe all of it together. But Luke knew what it had meant to him. The journey had brought him love and faith.

Love: in Arcadia his relationship with Grace had been largely a chaste matter, with a couple of furtive nights together. Now they had had two weeks of intimacy, and not just physical: Luke felt that he knew every facet of Grace's personality now, from two weeks of loving observation, and felt that she knew the same about him. And now that Grace was staying in Europe, the affair would have to revert to its long-distance status. He thought that it would survive the separation.

Grace walked up, and they stared at each other awkwardly. Nothing they said now could compare to what they did yesterday. But Luke made a try.

"It's not a separation, Grace. There's still eMails, instant messaging--"

"Oh, Luke, always the dork, thinking technology is the answer," Grace said sadly. "Look, I know how sexy you can be. If you go to Harvard and meet a cool Radcliffe girl --"

"I'll resist the temptation."

"No. I was going to say, go ahead. Don't let guilt over me stop you. Just save a corner of your heart for me."

It won't happen, Luke told himself. "And, um, I grant you the same freedom." It sounded ridiculously stilted saying that way, but Luke could not bear to say it more warmly. He still felt that, in the end, they would stay faithful to one another, and that he would finally persuade her to share his life.

He got up from his wheelchair and they embraced.

Faith: On the face of it, Joan's search for their great-great-aunt had ended in tragedy, the old woman's death within hours of reunion. Yet, in a bitter-sweet way, everybody had ended up with what they wanted. At the end of a lonely life, Maria Cavallo wanted to see her "heiress", and she had. Aunt Olive was on her ultimate voyage. The Girardi and Cavallo families had solved a family mystery, and Joan and Luke in particular had a clue as to why they had found special divine favor. Grace and Marghareta had received guidance on their choice of careers, and Adam had a new art form to explore.

God hadn't NEEDED to do any of that. It didn't bring HIM any closer to saving the world. But He had done it anyway, because He loved the young people who had sacrificed their free wills to help Him. Luke no longer suspected him of toying with their lives.

As if on cue, Marghareta walked over.

"I don't know how I'll explain all this to Michel," she said in a low voice, "but the events of the past few days have convinced me that we're dealing with something supernatural and benign. You can tell your friend that I might be willing to try a mission."

"He probably already knows," observed Joan.

"Yeah," said Luke. "If a total stranger walks up and asks you to do something really crazy, you'll know He got the message--"

THE END.


End file.
